Two brothers: George and Alfred Degiorgio, were on trial in Malta on Friday for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist, exactly five years after she was blown up by a car bomb.
They face life in prison if found guilty of planting and detonating the bomb that killed her on October 16, 2017.
They will be judged by a nine-person jury, which was selected on Friday.
Galizia was one of Malta’s most well-known writers.
She published corruption allegations on her blog on a regular basis.
She was working on a massive data leak concerning a power station project at the time of her murder.
The Degiorgio brothers were arrested and charged with the killing in December 2017 alongside a third suspect, Vince Muscat, who last year opted to plead guilty and turn state’s witness.
The prosecutors said that the three men placed a bomb beneath the driver’s seat of Galizia’s car.
George Degiorgio then detonated it using a mobile phone from a boat at sea, as the other two men watched from a vantage point close to Galizia’s home.
The explosion destroyed her car and her body parts flying everywhere, a court has heard.
Prosecutors have also charged another man, business tycoon Yorgen Fenech, with having commissioned the assassination.
Meanwhile, Fenech is a shareholder in the power station project that Galizia was investigating.
However, charges against Fenech are based on testimony provided by a taxi driver, Melvin Theuma, who says he served as a middleman between Fenech and the Degiorgio brothers.
Theuma has been given a pardon in exchange for his testimony, while Fenech denies all charges.
dpa/NAN.