Egyptian police detained Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo because they thought he was a British spy. They took him to a security facility where he was tortured and murdered, an Italian prosecutor told a Rome court on Monday.
Italy has charged four Egyptian security agents with kidnapping and killing Giulio Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, in Cairo in 2016.
“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,” prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco said, addressing the second hearing of the trial.
“Because of this activity, the defendants were erroneously convinced that Regeni was an English spy, sent to give financing to unions close to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Colaiocco said.
The prosecutor said Regeni suffered “horrendous torture” over the period of a week and was then deliberately killed. He added that details of his suffering would be revealed in a subsequent session.
In all, the prosecution wants to call 73 witnesses, including 27 who live in Egypt. Colaiocco acknowledged that Italy would need the cooperation of the Egyptian police to serve papers on this group telling them that they had to appear.
Originally prosecuted jointly by Italy and Egypt
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but came to different conclusions. Egypt blamed the killing on a group of gangsters, after initially suggesting he had died in a road accident or in a sex attack.
The case has strained diplomatic ties between Italy and Egypt. But in a sign that relations are returning to normal, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Cairo on Sunday as part of a European delegation that signed a multi-billion-euro “strategic partnership” with Egypt.
Judges reject appeal for dismissal
Judges in the Rome trial in absentia of four Egyptian intelligence said in rejecting their pleas for a dismissal that they had been guilty of “brutal and gratuitous violence” against the 28-year-old Cambridge University doctoral researcher.
“The modalities,” they added, “chosen for the kidnapping and murder cannot but be inspired by those essential purposes of public torture of a punitive and/or intimidating nature.”
The four Egyptian intelligence officers 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.
