I find myself once again retching, reading Simon Mercieca’s blog and peering inside the sick mind of Yorgen Fenech on whose behalf he writes. Like the Christ-killing libel against the Jews, Simon Mercieca digs up the old chestnut that Matthew killed his mother.

He quotes an interview Matthew Caruana Galizia gave to my colleague Carlo Bonini in which he told him it was his lazy habit to leave the car parked outside their Bidnija home. This, according to Simon Mercieca, is proof positive that Matthew Caruana Galizia shares part of the responsibility in his mother’s murder because had the car been parked behind the gate, the assassins would have found it harder to place the bomb that killed his mother.

I find myself having to point out what I know Simon Mercieca knows to be obvious. That his logic means that we should charge the car leasing company for leasing out the car that was used in the bomb. And the importer of the car for bringing it into the country. And its manufacturer. And its designer. And God, for being the creator of all things that ever have been.

This is all absurd in the extreme. Any share of responsibility in the crime must include the intent to participate in it. Simon Mercieca is calling this “negligence” as if it is written anywhere that anyone has an obligation to park their car inside their driveway on pain of their mother’s death.

But absurdity doesn’t come into this. This is pure evil. If we were to presume to put ourselves in Matthew Caruana Galizia’s shoes even for a moment of misguided empathy, we would have to feel guilt and regret for having not made the effort to park the car inside. It would have to be for anyone outside Matthew’s anguished heart to tell him that he can’t blame himself for this.

Like the vandals who killed Daphne’s dogs or tried to burn down Daphne’s house before, the assassins could have just as easily hopped over the gate. The assassins were considering various methods of killing Daphne including a sniper shot from a distance. They would have found a way given how well their client was willing to pay them to do it.

And in any case, people do not kill people because their cars are parked outside. It’s the ultimate reverse logic to infer from the fact that I don’t own a garage that I am responsible for the planting of a bomb in my car or the killing of my mother.

Simon Mercieca says he is bringing up this unbelievably cruel slander because the judges presiding the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry should have asked Matthew Caruana Galizia to explain himself. This, Simon Mercieca wants to suggest, could provide an alternative explanation for the death of his mother. Because matricide is a more plausible explanation than murder commissioned by his master Yorgen Fenech to cover up the crimes Daphne Caruana Galizia was on the way of exposing.

This is not the exercise of free speech. This is extreme trolling, the extension of calling Daphne a witch in her life by now calling her son a matricide. And it is being perpetrated by someone paid a handsome salary by a state-owned university.

I repeat this is not the exercise of academic freedom. This is a willful act of cruelty and complicity in a crime, being funded by the university. It must be stopped. If Simon Mercieca is going to represent Yorgen Fenech and his interests, not merely against the cause for truth and justice but even now against the basic decency owed to a son who was the last to see his fallen mother alive, he should do it on his own time without the benefit of false credibility of academic tenure.

To all those academics who said some appropriate words when Daphne was killed, this is something you can actually do something about. Demand from the senate you elect to fire this sick bastard or watch the credibility of your robes be scorched by the fire that your colleague continues to kindle in Bidnija.