Keith Schembri, the chief of staff of former disgraced Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, repeatedly told jurors he could not remember key events and insisted he did not know confessed murder middleman Melvin Theuma as he took the witness stand on Tuesday in the trial by jury of businessman Yorgen Fenech.
During the first hours of his testimony, Schembri sought to distance himself from Theuma despite a growing body of evidence presented throughout the trial linking the two through photographs, witnesses and a series of interactions following the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Time and again, Schembri responded to questions with variations of “I don’t remember”, “I don’t recall” or “I don’t know”, claiming that, almost seven years after the events, it was impossible for him to remember many of the details put to him by prosecutors.
One of the central themes of his testimony concerned Melvin Theuma, the confessed middleman in the assassination who later received a presidential pardon in exchange for his testimony.
Schembri insisted he did not know Theuma personally and denied having any meaningful relationship with him. When confronted with questions about meetings and contacts referred to by previous witnesses, the former chief of staff maintained that he had no recollection of most of the events.
His evidence stands in contrast to testimony heard over recent weeks from several witnesses who described Theuma’s repeated references to Schembri and contacts between the two men following the murder, including a phantom job with the government.
Jurors have already heard secretly recorded conversations in which Theuma repeatedly mentioned Schembri while discussing his fears that he had been abandoned as the murder investigation gathered pace. In one recording played in court last week, Theuma referred angrily to Yorgen Fenech and “that asshole friend of his, Keith Schembri”, while other recordings suggested that Theuma expected financial assistance from the former chief of staff.
Theuma made the secret recordings.
Previous witnesses have also testified about efforts to reassure Theuma as the police investigation intensified, including meetings involving former Office of the Prime Minister security officer Kenneth Camilleri, who told jurors that Schembri had instructed him to calm the increasingly anxious middleman.
Over the past month, jurors have repeatedly heard Schembri’s name emerge during testimony concerning contacts between Yorgen Fenech, Theuma and several figures close to the former Labour administration. Witnesses have also described meetings at Castille, communications before and after Fenech’s arrest, and police searches of Schembri’s residence during which investigators failed to recover his personal mobile phone.
Schembri resigned as chief of staff in November 2019, hours before his arrest during the dramatic stages of the murder investigation that ultimately led to criminal proceedings against Fenech.
Fenech, who has pleaded not guilty, stands accused of complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and of criminal association.
The trial by jury continues in the afternoon.
