2017 incident archive
2 documented cases.
- Homicide in bidnija, MT
· Convicted · 5 sources
An investigative journalist was killed in Bidnija, Malta, on 16 October 2017, when a bomb placed in her car exploded shortly after she left her home. The commemoration held each year at the scene takes place at three in the afternoon, the time she was killed. Her father has described paid assassins watching and waiting from across the valley from the family home in the days before the attack. The two men who carried out the bombing pleaded guilty at the opening of their trial on 14 October 2022 and were each sentenced to forty years' imprisonment. Their appeal, in which they sought to have the sentence quashed and a fresh trial held, was dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 22 November 2023. A third man had been sentenced to fifteen years in February 2021, a reduced term granted in recognition of the information he gave about this killing and about the killing of a lawyer in 2015. On 22 January 2026 the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals of four further men convicted in connection with this killing and that of the lawyer; two of them were convicted of complicity in the journalist's killing and of possessing explosive material. On 2 September 2026 a jury acquitted, by an eight-to-one majority, the businessman accused of commissioning the killing. Prosecutors had alleged that he paid an intermediary €150,000 to arrange it. Under Maltese law an appeal against a jury acquittal is restricted to specific legal grounds, including serious procedural irregularities or a manifestly wrong application of the law; the prosecution has said it intends to appeal. On 16 September 2026, nine years after the killing, thousands marched through Valletta to renew calls for justice, gathering in front of parliament and moving to the journalist's protest memorial opposite the court building. The home affairs minister said police would be given whatever resources, equipment or foreign assistance they requested for any further investigations, while insisting investigators must be left to work independently.
- Homicide in hornachos, ES
· Alleged · 3 sources
A woman disappeared from her home village of Hornachos, in the province of Badajoz, on the evening of 9 May 2017. She had stepped out briefly to see off a family whose daughter she looked after, leaving her phone and keys behind and telling her son she would be back to make dinner. She never returned, and for almost nine years the case remained unsolved, although her family had long suspected two neighbours. In March 2026 the Central Operative Unit of the Guardia Civil arrested two brothers, her neighbours, and searched their house. Skeletal remains found under a cemented and tiled inspection chamber in the patio were identified by biological analysis as hers. Days after the arrest the younger brother confessed to the killing and exculpated his brother. Both are held in pre-trial detention under an investigating court in Villafranca de los Barros on suspicion of murder and unlawful detention. On 14 September 2026 the two men were brought from prison to their house in Hornachos for a judicial reconstruction of the crime, where they were met by angry neighbours. Only the elder brother took part in the reconstruction; the younger, who had confessed, did not cooperate.