Xhieda ta’ Corinne Vella – 19 ta’ Frar 2020
Fl-Atti tal-Inkjesta datata 19 ta' Novembru 2019, rigward skont it- Termini ta’ Referenza ta’ l-Inkjesta Pubblika dwar l-Assassinju ta’ Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Seduta miżmuma llum l-Erbgha, 19 ta’ Frar 2020.
Corinne Vella, bint Michael Vella u Rose Marie nee’ Mamo, imwielda Tas- Sliema u residenti Lija bil-gurament tghid:
Witness : This is a document which I have prepared since the last time I presented. It supplements the first document . . .
Imh. A. Lofaro : Meaning the one you presented two (2) days ago. Witness : The one presented on Monday.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : Yes, on Monday about Neville Gafa’. Imh. A. Lofaro : Supplementing that one.
Witness : It supplements that document. It can be read alone but they are complementary. The content as far as I could be certain, does not overlap with what I presented on Monday. In other words the screen shots which are in this document, to the best of my knowledge, are not duplicates.
Imh. M. Mallia : Are?
Witness : They are not duplicates of what I presented on Monday. I tried to filter out which ones are duplicated and removed as many as I could.
Imh. A. Lofaro : And they concern Mr. Gafa’?
Witness : They are posts from Mr. Gafa’ – I will explain from the top. They are what I managed to find on Facebook is that there are two (2) – what we call profiles. They appear to be authentic. One (1) of them has only a small number of friends and only two (2) posts
and another one has thousands of friends and several posts – both are under Mr. Gafa’s name. Both of them carry his picture.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Facebook right?
Witness : Facebook. There is also what we call a Facebook pace. This is a tool that Facebook offers for promotional purposes. Businesses use them to sell their products and services. Public figures use them to promote themselves. Mr. Gafa’ – there is a page in Mr. Gafa’s name. From appearance it seems to be a page which he has set up and operates himself and there are several posts there which overlap with what appears on the personal profile pages, which means that doubles the message, because some people who follow his profile – some people who follow him as a – on his page, are not necessarily linked up with him as a friend.
Imh. A. Lofaro : I see. Ok. Follower, not a friend. Ok.
Witness : Yes, you can follow somebody’s profile, you can be . . . Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : And with a page, you either like the page or you don’t. Imh. A. Lofaro : Yes.
Witness : Basically it is a way of amplifying your message. This is what I found, there may be more. The settings are not visible to me so I do not know if the previous settings prevent me from seeing certain posts or seeing information on that particular profile. I am not linked up to Mr. Gafa’ on social media. I do not know him in real life, I have never had any conversation with him. I noted that he follows me on twitter. I do not follow him. But I did go into his public profiles because that is where you can find – that is the closest you can get to hearing a person speak for themselves. And what I did was again – as I did for the first document, I took screen shots of all the posts that I found which seemed relevant.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Do you know when the page was set up?
Witness : I can’t remember seeing any indication of when it was set up. Imh. A. Lofaro : Or when the first post was done.
Witness : I didn’t go that far back. Going all the way back through a public profile takes quite a while . . .
Imh. A. Lofaro : Yes, I understand.
Witness : Because it loads very slowly and so on and in the limited time I had, this is what I could do.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Yes.
Witness : If it is – if you feel it is relevant, I can look that up.
Imh. A. Lofaro : The posts, do they relate to before she was assassinated? Witness : There are from before and they continued after.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok. Before for sure.
Witness : Yes, they go back and there is where searching the profile page is not available on the community pages where you can actually pick the month and year that you want to search.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : So if you go back several years, you can go back say to January two thousand and sixteen (2016), and you can just search within that bracket.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : That is not possible on what they call ‘the pages’. And so, yes, the posts do go back.
Imh. A. Lofaro : They do go back.
Witness : Yes. Yes. And many of them, as I included in the document on Monday, many of them are photos of Daphne going about her daily life and so on. Now there appear to be – there is a lot of repetition because the same photo appears over and over again. That in itself, you know, deserves to be explained because there are particular pictures that come up again and again sometimes in quick succession, you know, the next day and the day after that or a week later. And with no message. Just the photograph.
Imh. A. Lofaro : And so you said you are going to explain this? Witness : I can’t explain it because I did not do this.
Imh. A. Lofaro : I know.
Witness : This is something I noted. This is something Mr. Gafa’ has to explain.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok. Ok.
Witness : What is the message when you put up a photograph of a person with whom you have absolutely no relationship and you have no
message? It happened in several occasions. I do not know if you have a copy in your hands, but . . . .
Imh. A. Lofaro : No, we don’t.
Witness : This is an example. This is an example. There is a photograph of Daphne, there is no message.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Nothing.
Witness : Nothing. And that happened repeatedly. At times there were photographs which were memes, sometimes were taken in the street, sometimes they were screen shots from videos notably form the night she was arrested before the election, screen shots from news reports, there is one from inews which has been used many times on his Facebook profile. And the disturbing thing to me was apart from seeing so much of a quick succession, was seeing that he would put these posts on his personal profile, which meant that is what you are telling your friends, and then he would put it on his promotional page, which is what you are telling your – well it is for a better term, your market, your followers, the people you want to reach out to, because you want to build a message.
Imh. V. Said Pullicino : Every time there is a photo, even without a message, does it entail that who is putting it there must make a – actual make a physical effort to put it in?
Witness : Yes. No, no, no, it cannot happen automatically. Social media are operated by the person who sets up the account. You can give somebody else access to your account. It is the equivalent of giving someone access to your bank account.
Imh. V. Said Pullicino : Whatever it is, somebody has to actually make . . . Witness : Yes, they can’t be shared automatically.
Imh. V. Said Pullicino : Ok.
Imh. A. Lofaro : No, automatically no.
Witness : I can see where the question is coming from. There are settings on social media, because they are not quite integrated, that allow you to save you time to allow you to put up the same message across different platforms. But if you put the same message on
your personal profile, and on your page, you have to do that twice.
Imh. V. Said Pullicino : Even the first option would require you to put in that particular . . .
Witness : Yes. Somebody has to do it the first time. The multiplier effect is across platforms not across profiles.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : And there is something else which I did not highlight in the first document is that several posts include what we call name tags. Name tags are where somebody on social media want to draw their attention on the post, you type in their name and it sends a message to them.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Is it like tagging someone? Witness : It is tagging yes.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : But the tagging works in different ways. If you see a highlighted name on a post, that is a tag. It means that person received a notification from the platform . . .
Imh. A. Lofaro : When it is highlighted. Witness : Yes.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : That means it is tagged. That person received a message from the platform, in this case Facebook, telling them that there is a post which mentions them. When you see multiple tags, that is an attempt to draw multiple – you know, a group of people . . . . .
Imh. A. Lofaro : A group.
Witness : . . . . to focus on that message and in fact invite them to share it which means you are amplifying it. This is done openly. These are his public profiles on posts which are viewable by anybody. I do not know what he is doing in private. There are forty five (45) pages here.
Imh. A. Lofaro : Ok.
Witness : There is probably more.