The case of the Fiumicello researcher The body of the Cambridge University student was found on February 3, 2016. So far the Egyptian authorities, with little cooperation, have provided incomplete and inconsistent evidence. In the crosshairs of the Italian judiciary 4 Egyptian agents
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Giulio Regeni was born in Trieste on January 15, 1988
Six years have passed since that January 25, 2016 , when Giulio Regeni was lost in Cairo, the researcher from Fiumicello (Udine) who was in the Egyptian capital for a period of research and study at the American University. Regeni, a student of Cambridge University, was pursuing a PhD from Girton College and was doing research on Egyptian independent trade unions at the time. The disappearance and the discovery
Giulio’s last communication, that evening, dates back to 19:41, when he sent an SMS to her girlfriend who was in Ukraine, informing her that she was going out. Noura Wahby, a student and friend of Regeni (they had met two years earlier at the university), wrote on her Facebook profile that there had been no news of the researcher for several hours. According to what Wahby knew, in fact, Giulio had an appointment with some people in Tahrir square , one of the most famous places in Cairo, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. When the alarm was raised, the research of the Friulian student continued for more than a week. Until the following February 3 , when Giulio’s lifeless body , horribly mutilated , was found in an escarpment along the highway that connects the capital to Alexandria, on the outskirts of Cairo. The destruction of the corpseAlready from the recovery of the corpse, the traces of physical torture to which Regeni had been subjected
immediately appeared : bruises and abrasions , more than two dozen bone fractures , including those with seven ribs. He also broke all his fingers and toes, as well as his legs, arms and shoulder blades. Giulio also had five broken teeth and a series of stab wounds all over his body, even on the soles of his feet. There were also cigarette burns on Regeni’s body . The cause of death was attributed to a fracture in a cervical vertebra, probably due to a violent blow to the neck. The autopsy also reveals a brain hemorrhage.
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One of the many demonstrations in memory of Giulio Regeni The first investigations
Initially, the Egyptian police presented a series of hypotheses, all of which turned out to be unfounded due to lack of evidence: first a car accident, then personal reasons due to a phantom homosexual relationship, and finally environments linked to drug dealing. After an initial and formal willingness to collaborate on the part of the Egyptian authorities, the Italian investigators who had flown to Cairo to carry out the first interrogations found themselves faced with a real wall of omerta. The investigators of the Rome prosecutor’s office, responsible for crimes against Italians abroad, had the opportunity to question only a few witnesses for a few minutes. Video footage of the subway station where Regeni was last seen had been deleted.The “fake” round-up and the discovery of documents
Two months after Giulio’s disappearance, on 24 March 2016, the Egyptian police shot and killed four men , initially indicated as likely responsible for the kidnapping of the Friulian researcher. The Egyptian Interior Ministry, publishing a post on the official Facebook profile, claims that the vanquished gang specialized in kidnapping foreign citizens in order to extort money from them. During the operation, the police reported that they found a red bag , with the FIGC logo, in which, among various objects, there were various personal effects of Regeni: the passport , the badges .of the University of Cambridge and the American University of Cairo, the credit card . In the photo posted on Facebook there is also a cube of hashish , which seems to support the thesis of killing for drug reasons. But, as initially clarified by family members and autopsy experts, Giulio Regeni did not use drugs.
Later, the New Cairo prosecutor’s office rules out that the gang was involved in the researcher’s murder. After the delivery of the telephone records, it turns out that the head of the criminal gang was more than 100 kilometers from Cairo in the days of Regeni’s disappearance. The families of the victims of the blitz have denied the reconstruction of the shooting, since the alleged criminals were killed by the police at point-blank range or at a short distance.
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Torchlight procession in memory of Giulio Regeni Insufficient
documentation The official documentation of the Egyptian part of the coroner (consisting of a 91-page file, delivered to the Italian embassy in Cairo) confirmed that Giulio Regeni had been interrogated and torturedat least up to seven days, at 10-14 hour intervals, before dying. According to this examination, the killing took place about 10 hours before the body was found. The results of the autopsy carried out by Egyptian doctors were never made public. Italian doctors also carried out an autopsy exam on Giulio’s body. Meanwhile, in September 2016, the Egyptian government agrees to hand over the telephone records to the investigators. Egyptian prosecutors on a mission to Rome admit for the first time that Regeni had been investigated and monitored by the police before his disappearance, but no criticisms relating to national security were highlighted. The indictment
On 10 December 2020 the public prosecutor’s office of Rome, amidst many difficulties and obstacles opposed by the Egyptian authorities, closed the preliminary investigations. On May 25, 2021 , four officers of the Egyptian internal secret service were indicted: General Tariq Sabir , Colonels Athar Kamel and Usham Helmi and Major Magdi Sharif . Among the alleged crimes, multiple kidnapping, concurrence in very serious personal injury and murder. The crime of torture, introduced in the Italian penal code in 2017, is not contemplated. However, despite the indictment, the four officers are nowhere to be found.since the Egyptian judiciary did not provide their residential addresses, it allowed the Italian magistrates to be present at the interrogations they were subjected to, despite the registration in the register of suspects, the requests of the Rome public prosecutor and the letters rogatory international. The trial goes back to the judge for the preliminary hearing
However, the trial is canceled: after 7 hours in the council chamber, the judges of the III Court of Assizes of Rome have decided that the trial cannot begin because there is no proof that the four Egyptian agents know the existence of the trial. their cargo. The documents of the investigation therefore return to the judge for the preliminary hearing who will again have to try to notify the accused of the proceedings against them and then be able to send them back to trial.
Since 25 January 2016, an international movement has been asking for truth and justice for Giulio Regeni.
