Foreign Desk Report
ROME: The trial of four senior members of Egypt’s security services started on Thursday in their absence, with the quartet facing charges over their alleged role in the disappearance and murder of student Giulio Regeni in Cairo in 2016. Italy hopes the trial will shed light on a killing that shocked the country and strained ties with Egypt, which has repeatedly denied that its officials had anything to do with Regeni’s brutal death.
“The search for the truth has always been, and will continue to be, a fundamental goal in our relations with Egypt,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the case last month.
“Achieving a definitive picture, in the framework of a fair trial, will not bring Giulio back to his parents, but it will reaffirm the strength of justice, transparency and the rule of law in which he believed.” A postgraduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, Regeni disappeared in the Egyptian capital in January 2016. His body was found almost a week later and a post-mortem examination showed he had been extensively tortured before his death. Italian and Egyptian prosecutors investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.
The Italian prosecutors say Major Magdi Sharif, from Egypt’s General Intelligence, Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo city, were responsible for the “aggravated kidnapping” of Regeni.
Sharif has also been accused of “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder.” The suspects have never responded publicly to the accusations and Egyptian police and officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in Regeni’s disappearance and killing.Regeni’s parents were amongst the first to arrive at the trial, which is being held in a high-security Rome prison. Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office said the government would be a civil party in the case, indicating that it sees itself as a wronged party.
