The four Egyptian intelligence
officers who are on trial in absentia in Rome for torturing to
death Giulio Regeni in January-February 2016 allegedly wove a
web around the Italian Cambridge University doctoral researcher
before pouncing and abducting him for his work on independent
trade unions, prosecutors told the second hearing of the trial
Monday.
"The overall picture that has emerged is that of a web that
slowly, between September 2015 and 25 January 2016, was
tightened around Regeni by the defendants," said deputy
prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco in the courtroom while illustrating
the list of witnesses to be heard in the trial against the four
Egyptian officers, with the latter date being his last
appearance in public before his abduction, on the Cairo metro.
"A web created both through the acquisition of his passport
without his knowledge, house searches in his absence, stalking,
photographs and videos, and through the 'friends' Regeni
frequented who reported, in real time, to the defendants about
their meetings with the Italian", Colaiocco said, referring to
the street union leaders who fingered the 28-year-old Friuli
born student as a spy.
The prosecutor also stressed that they will need the Italian
foreign ministry to work with them to call and hear Egyptian
witnesses for the trial.
"We say it from now on: we will need the fruitful work of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will have to elicit the
cooperation of the Egyptian authorities.
"Only the Egyptian police, in fact, can serve the papers and
give the go-ahead to hear at trial the 27 witnesses on our list
and living in Egypt.
"This cooperation will be crucial for a complete and exhaustive
reconstruction of the facts'.
Egypt has so far stonewalled the investigations amid a long
string of repeated empty promises of cooperation from President
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Among other things, they have consistently withheld the
addresses and contact details of the four officers, a fact that
led to a long delay before Italy's high court said it could go
ahead without them being informed officially they were on trial.
Regeni's parents, meanwhile, were asked about Premier Giorgia
Meloni's assurances that "we will go forward for truth and
justice" after meeting Sisi on a 7.4 billion euro EU-Egypt
migrant-development deal in Cairo Sunday.
"We do not comment on Prime Minister Meloni's words, we just say
that in our country fortunately there is the separation of
powers, unlike what happens in regimes", said Alessandra
Ballerini, lawyer of Giulio Regeni's parents, Claudio Regeni and
Paola Defendi.
Meloni said after signing the EU deal with Sisi that "the work
we are doing with Egypt does not change our position on the
Regeni case".
Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University doctoral researcher
into independent Egyptian street trade unions, disappeared on
the Cairo metro on January 25, 2016 and his mutilated,
semi-naked body was found in a ditch on the road to Alexandria
on February 3.
The four Egyptian security officers, National Security General
Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed
Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif,
have been put on trial in absentia after Cairo long stonewalled
the case and refused to give their addresses or contact numbers.
This caused a long delay, when ended in September when the
Constitutional Court ruled that the trial could proceed even
though the officers have not been formally notified of the
proceedings against them.
Regeni's torture and murder sparked global outrage, with more
than 4,600 academics signing a petition calling for an
investigation into his death and into the many disappearances
that take place in Egypt each month.
On January 25 last Italy marked the eighth anniversary of
Regeni's disappearance with events titled All The Chickens Come
Home To Roost referring to the long-awaited Rome trial.
Regeni is believed to have been killed after a street seller
union head fingered him as an alleged spy, and due to the
politically sensitive nature of his doctoral research for the
British university.
Regeni, from a small town near Udine in northeastern Italy, was
tortured so badly that his mother Paola Deffendi said she could
only recognise him "from the tip of his nose".
Deffendi said "all the evil in the world" was visited on her
son's body.
His body, according to an Italian autopsy, showed signs of
extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe
beating; extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault
with a stick; more than two dozen bone fractures, among them
seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms,
and shoulder blades; multiple stab wounds on the body including
the soles of the feet, possibly from an ice pick or awl-like
instrument; numerous cuts over the entire body made with a sharp
instrument suspected to be a razor; extensive cigarette burns; a
larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard
and hot object; a brain haemorrhage; and a broken cervical
vertebra, which ultimately caused death.
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