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.
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