A Maltese court has acquitted one of the country's richest businessmen of orchestrating the 2017 car-bomb assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, delivering a verdict that has shocked press freedom advocates and the victim's family while drawing widespread condemnation across Europe. A jury of nine — six women and three men — voted eight to one to clear Yorgen Fenech, 44, of both charges he faced: complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia and criminal association with intent to commit a crime. The verdict was announced on Wednesday evening in Valletta, Malta's capital, and the judge immediately ordered Fenech's release from custody. Had he been convicted, he would have faced a life sentence.

Caruana Galizia, who was 53 when she died, was one of Malta's most prominent journalists, widely dubbed a