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A court in Rome on Monday, September 28, sentenced three Egyptian security officials to 10 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Giulio Regeni, the Cambridge University researcher who disappeared in Cairo in January 2016, Reuters reported via Al Jazeera.
The three men were tried in absentia. They are Major Magdi Sharif of Egypt's General Intelligence, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo. A fourth defendant, former state security chief Major General Tarek Sabir, was acquitted. The judge also dismissed a separate charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder against Sharif.
None of the four men has ever responded to the accusations, and Egypt denies any involvement in Regeni's death. Relations between Rome and Cairo have been strained by the case for years, and the convicted officers are unlikely to be extradited to serve their sentences.
Regeni was a postgraduate student researching trade union activity among street vendors in Cairo when he vanished. His body was later found beside a road with broken teeth, broken bones and cigarette burns. A post-mortem examination determined he had been tortured. Italian prosecutors argued that Egyptian security officers abducted and tortured him because of his research. Human rights activists said his injuries resembled those found on people who had been held in Egyptian security agency facilities.
Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told reporters the verdict was reached despite "less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities."
The road to Monday's ruling was long. Egyptian and Italian prosecutors first investigated the case together. Egypt later blamed members of a criminal gang who it said were killed in a police shootout, and it now says Regeni's killers are unknown. Italian prosecutors accused Cairo of undermining their inquiry and refusing to disclose where the accused men were.
Italian law allows prosecution of crimes committed abroad against Italian citizens. An earlier trial of the four officers was suspended in 2021 after a judge questioned whether the accused knew they had been charged. Italy's top court dismissed that ruling in 2023, finding that Egypt's failure to cooperate should not block the trial from going ahead. Egypt has denied refusing to cooperate with Italian officials.
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