Thirteen hours before Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb explosion, a suspicious device was switched on in Bidnija and remained active until it received a text message at the time of her death.
Information about the October 16 bombing was relayed to magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit in court on Tuesday afternoon, as the compilation of evidence against three men accused of killing Ms Caruana Galizia finally got underway.
Inspector Keith Arnaud told the magistrate of the suspicious SIM cards identified by investigators; of odd debris, including a piece of plastic with the word "card" printed on it, discovered at the crime scene; and revealed that one of the murder suspects' phones was already being tapped at the time of the murder.
The court hearing got off to a bumpy start in the morning, when defence lawyers asked the magistrate to recuse herself as well as to refer the case to a Constitutional court, saying there were grounds to believe the chief justice had been unduly pressured when assigning a magistrate to the case.
BLOG: A blow-by-blow account of the court session
Magistate Stafrace Zammit disagreed, first dismissing the recusal request and then, after a...
