Three Egyptian agents sentenced in absentia for the death of young Italian

Na sentence handed down more than 10 years after the death of Regeni, which shocked Italy, the court of Rome sentenced three of the four defendants tried in absentia – since Egypt never cooperated with the judicial process, refusing to notify the officers – after concluding that they kidnapped and tortured to death the Italian citizen, a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, born in the Venice region (north), who studied the Cairo street unions.

The court condemned Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, for whom the prosecution had sought life imprisonment, and Colonels Uhsam Helmi and Athar Kamel Mohamed, for whom the Public Prosecutor sought sentences of 17 and a half years in prison, having acquitted the fourth defendant, General Tariq Sabir.

Giulio Regeni's 28-year-old body was found in a ditch on the highway connecting Cairo to Alexandria on February 3, 2016, nine days after it disappeared while circulating on the Egyptian capital subway.

The young man will have been kidnapped and tortured for days by the agents of the security services now convicted, on suspicion of being a spy, having his mother stated that Giulio Regeni was so brutalized that he only recognized him “by the nose”, commenting that “all the evil of the world” had fallen on his son’s body, a phrase that would give the title to a documentary produced this year.

This trial had been suspended for two years until the Constitutional Court decided in 2023 that it could proceed, although the defendants had not been formally notified of the charges.

“ We are here today, despite this incredibly difficult and difficult obstacle course. Few would have wagered that we would reach a trial and then a verdict. The Egyptian regime did everything in its power to prevent this trial, but this family is resilient,” said lawyer Alessandra Ballerini, who represented Regeni’s parents.

This sentence in Italy takes place about six years after, in Egypt, the Attorney General cleared the four suspects of any responsibility for the murder of the student and decided to close the case.