Italy convicts three Egyptians for torturing and killing Giulio Regeni

An Italian court has handed down a verdict convicting three Egyptian security agents for their role in kidnapping Giulio Regeni. The student vanished ten years ago and was found dead after being tortured. Prosecutors sentenced the men to ten years in prison on Monday for aggravated kidnapping. A fourth defendant, Major General Tarek Sabir, walked away free because the judge dismissed charges of conspiracy to commit murder against him. These officials faced trial without appearing in person. Extradition seems unlikely now that relations between Rome and Cairo have suffered so much over this specific case.

Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi spoke to reporters about the difficult path to this outcome. He noted they achieved their result despite what he described as less than wholehearted cooperation from Egyptian authorities. Regeni was a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge who disappeared in Cairo during January 2016. His body washed up on a roadside broken and scarred with cigarette burns, shattered teeth, and snapped bones. A post-mortem confirmed torture had taken place before his death. Human rights activists pointed out that these injuries match patterns found in victims processed through Egyptian security agency facilities.

Egypt maintains it never involved itself in Regeni's death. The four men accused include Major Magdi Sharif from General Intelligence, police Colonel Hisham Helmy, and Colonel Ather Kamal who once led investigations in Cairo. None of them have responded to the accusations leveled against their names. Earlier Italian prosecutors argued that Egyptian officials kidnapped Regeni because his academic research touched on trade unions. At the time he vanished, he was studying union activities among street vendors in Cairo. They claim Egypt undermined the investigation by refusing to disclose where the suspects were held.

Italian law permits prosecuting crimes committed abroad when they target Italian citizens. An earlier trial of these four men was suspended back in 2021 after a judge questioned its legitimacy regarding whether the accused knew they faced charges. That decision got overturned in 2023 by Italy's top court which ruled the trial should not be impeded by Egypt's failure to cooperate fully. Egyptian and Italian prosecutors started working together on this file initially. However, Egypt later claimed members of a criminal gang committed the murder before dying in a police shootout. They have since insisted Regeni's killers remain unknown to this day.