George and Alfred Degiorgio have made a new court bid to suspend their upcoming trial for the murder Daphne Caruana Galizia. The brothers, who both stand accused of carrying out the 2017 assassination, are claiming that their right to a fair hearing would be breached in several ways if the trial were to go ahead. One of the two, Alfred Degiorgio, is reportedly staging a hunger strike in prison to protest the situation. He was taken to Mater Dei Hospital for observation on Sunday. In an application filed before the First Hall, Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, they argued that their defence has been dealt a crippling blow by their lawyer renouncing his brief last month. William Cuschieri informed a court some weeks ago that he would no longer be representing the brothers in the case. A court assigned the brothers two legal aid lawyers after they failed to nominate a new lawyer of their choosing. The Degiorgios are arguing that they are unable to set up a valid defence in the trial without the help of their trusted lawyer, given the scale and complexity of the case, which includes around 15,000 documents and four gigabytes of data. They say they have not been...
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