A court in Malta sentenced two brothers to 40 years in prison each over the 2017 car-bomb murder of an anti-corruption journalist.

The sentences for George and Alfred Degiorgio came on the first day of their trial for the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The proceedings saw them initially plead not guilty before a judge in the morning. But just hours later that stance changed.

"Their position has changed... they declare they are guilty," defense attorney Simon Micallef Stafrace told the court, ahead of the sentencing.

As an EU member state, Malta does not permit the death penalty.

What were the brothers charged with?

The Degiorgio brothers were charged with having set the bomb that caused Daphne Caruana Galizia's car to explode as she drove near her home on October 16, 2017.

Previously, Caruana Galizia had investigated suspected corruption among political and business circles in the European Union nation, which is a financial haven in the Mediterranean.

A third suspect, Vincent Muscat, avoided trial after changing his plea to guilty. Muscat was handed down a 15-year jail term.

Prosecutors alleged that the Degiorgio brothers had been hired by a Maltese businessman with ties to the government. That businessman has been charged and will be tried separately.

Caruana Galizia uncovered high-level corruption

Daphne Caruana Galizia started looking into the Panama Papers leaks in 2013, eventually uncovering offshore companies connected to Malta's business and political world.

Her anti-corruption career, partly as an opinion writer interested in politics, had led her to one of the most important investigative projects in Europe. Her sister, Corinne Vella, said she faced plenty of threats before her killing by car bomb.

When Caruana Galizia began uncovering high-level corruption in the country, she was slapped with both libel and defamation lawsuits that increased during the final year of her life.

The slain journalist was one of Malta's most prominent public figures. Once described as a "one-woman WikiLeaks", she was a critic of the country's political elite in her blog.

"There are crooks everywhere you look now," she wrote, hours before the attack that killed her. "The situation is desperate."

jsi/rt (AP, dpa, AFP)