Regeni defendants weaved web around Giulio - prosecutors (4)

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 18 - 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. (ANSA).