Rome court convicts three Egyptian officials in Giulio Regeni kidnapping

A Rome court sentenced three Egyptian security officials to 10 years in prison Monday for kidnapping Giulio Regeni, an Italian doctoral student whose tortured body was found near Cairo in 2016. A fourth defendant was acquitted, closing a years-long effort to bring the case to trial in Italy.

The officials were tried in absentia on charges of aggravated kidnapping. The BBC reported that they denied the charges. Al Jazeera reported that the four men had never responded to the accusations against them. Extradition remains unlikely, both outlets reported.

Regeni, 28, was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge and researching Egypt’s independent trade unions when he disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016. Al Jazeera reported that his work included union activity among street vendors. His body was found days later beside a road near the city. An autopsy found that he had been tortured.

According to Al Jazeera, the body had broken teeth, cigarette burns and broken bones. The BBC reported that Italian prosecutors described injuries consistent with blows from “kicks, fists, sticks and clubs” and said Regeni died from a broken neck. His mother told Italy’s parliament in 2018 that his body was so disfigured she could identify him only by the tip of his nose.

The case exposed a divide between Italian and Egyptian investigators, who initially worked together. Italian prosecutors concluded that Egyptian security officials kidnapped and tortured Regeni because of his research. Egypt denied state involvement. Al Jazeera reported that Egyptian authorities said members of a criminal gang were responsible and had been killed in a police shootout; Egypt subsequently maintained that Regeni’s killers were unknown. The BBC reported that Egyptian authorities had also suggested other possible explanations for his death, including a car accident, a failed drug deal or a botched robbery.

The BBC identified the acquitted defendant as Gen Tariq Sabir and the three convicted men as Col Usham Helmi, Col Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Maj Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif. Al Jazeera, which used different spellings for their names, reported that the judge also dismissed an accusation of “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder” against Sharif.

An earlier attempt to try the men was suspended in 2021 over concerns that they might not know they had been charged because the defendants could not be located. Italy’s Constitutional Court allowed the proceedings to go ahead in 2023. Italian prosecutors accused Egypt of withholding the men’s whereabouts and undermining the investigation; Egypt denied refusing to cooperate.

“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said after the verdict. Alessandra Ballerini, a lawyer for Regeni’s family, said: “Impunity can be defeated and democracies can place limits on arbitrary power.”