The Italian government will try again on Tuesday to secure justice for the Italian students kidnapped and murdered in Cairo, as the second trial of four Egyptian security officials accused of the brutal killing begins.
Giulio Regeni, 28, was conducting an investigation when he was abducted in January 2016. His body was found dumped on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital nine days later, bearing extensive signs of torture.
The murder significantly strained relations between Italy and Egypt, with Italian parliamentarians later accusing Cairo of being “openly hostile” to attempts to bring the suspects to justice.
An Italian judge dismissed a 2021 trial on the same day it opened because prosecutors failed to formally notify four suspects of the proceedings against them.
But the Constitutional Court ruled in September that the case could continue in their absence, and a new trial is scheduled to begin in Rome on Tuesday.
In the original court document, the four defendants are named as General Tariq Sabir, Colonels Atal Kamel and Oussam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.
All have been charged with kidnapping, and Sharif has also been charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm.
However, as in 2021, they will not be present at the trial.
“They are completely untraceable,” Tranquilino Sarno, a lawyer appointed by the court to represent Kamel, told AFP last week.
For this reason, even if convicted, they “certainly will not serve their sentences,” he added.
– openly hostile –
Investigators believe Regeni was kidnapped and killed after being mistaken for a foreign spy. As part of his doctoral program, Regeni studied trade unions in Egypt, a particularly sensitive political issue.
His mother later said his body was so badly mutilated that she recognized her son only by “the tip of his nose.”
His family’s lawyer said five of his teeth were broken, 15 bones were fractured and there were writings carved into his flesh.
An Italian parliamentary committee held Egyptian security services responsible for Regeni’s death in December 2021, just weeks after the case was dismissed.
It also accused the Egyptian judiciary of failing to reveal the defendants’ whereabouts and acting in a “disruptive and openly hostile manner.”
In December 2020, Egyptian prosecutors said they would exonerate all four suspects and a fifth suspect in Regeni’s murder and drop the case.
crowbar/IDE/GV