Three men have been convicted over the killing of Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University student who was brutally tortured inside an Egyptian prison described as the “cemetery of the living” a decade ago.
The Italian-born postgraduate, 28, disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016. His body was discovered a week later beside a motorway, bearing a broken neck and extensive signs of torture.
A post-mortem examination in Rome found that Regeni had been beaten, burned, stabbed and flogged over four days.
All of his fingers and toes had been fractured, and he died after his neck was broken.
Egypt has maintained that ordinary criminals were behind his death. Italy, however, has argued that Regeni was targeted by the state because his academic research focused on the politically sensitive issue of trade unions.
Four men were tried in absentia in Rome over the case a decade after Regeni’s death. However, those convicted are unlikely ever to be extradited to Italy to serve their sentences.
In a ruling delivered on Monday, a judge found Major Magdi Sharif of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Cairo police investigations chief Colonel Ather Kamal and police Colonel Hisham Helmy guilty of Regeni’s “aggravated kidnapping”.
Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, was acquitted of the same charge. The court also rejected an allegation that Sharif had conspired to commit aggravated murder.
Cambridge University student Giulio Regeni, 28, was found dead after being tortured in Egypt
Paola Deffendi, Regeni’s mother, centre, leaves court after three Egyptian security officials were convicted to ten years in prison for abducting her son; a fourth man was acquitted
None of the four men has publicly addressed the accusations, while Egypt continues to deny that its state institutions played any role in Regeni’s death.
Prosecutors had requested a life sentence for Sharif, along with prison terms of 17 years and six months for each of the other three defendants.
“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said. He added that he would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.
Alessandra Ballerini, a lawyer representing the Regeni family, welcomed the verdict delivered on Monday.
“From today, people around the world can feel safer,” she said. “Impunity can be defeated and democracies can place limits on arbitrary power.”
One of the final people known to have seen Regeni alive gave evidence to the court in 2024.
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The Egyptian man, whose identity was protected by court order, said he was arrested on the same day as Regeni and first encountered him at a Cairo police station.
He said the two men were later blindfolded and put into a car together.
“He kept asking for a lawyer, speaking Italian. I knew the language because I had worked for an Italian company, so I told the people in the car. But they punched me and said: ‘Do you want to be a translator? He speaks Arabic better than you.’”
He continued: “We were taken to a state security office known as the ‘cemetery of the living’. Giulio was taken to the section for foreigners. I never saw him again, but I could hear him being beaten because we were in adjoining rooms. When it comes to torturing people, they do not discriminate.”
‘They tied our hands, beat us, tied us with handcuffs attached to the bed, and then used electroshock therapy.’
Relations between Italy and Egypt deteriorated sharply following the killing, but ties have gradually recovered in recent years despite continuing demands by Regeni’s family and rights groups for accountability.
Italian-born Regeni was undertaking a postgraduate degree at the time of his death and was believed to be researching trade unions – a sensitive subject in Cairo
Regeni’s family hold a banner reading ‘Truth for Giulio Regeni’ outside the Palace of Justice (Italy’s Supreme Court) on the day of the first hearing in Rome, February 2024
The Rome court said the three men should pay damages to Regeni’s family and the Italian state. Ballerini said the government should demand payment and sever relations with Egypt.
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.
The Egyptians blamed the murder on a gang of criminals, who were subsequently killed in a shootout with police.
But Italian prosecutors argued that Regeni was abducted and tortured by Egyptian security officials because of his academic research into independent unions, a sensitive subject in Cairo.
The trial opened in 2021 but was delayed by legal disputes over whether the defendants had been properly notified of the proceedings.
Italy tried on around 30 occasions, through diplomatic and government channels, to obtain the addresses of the suspects, but never received any answer, a prosecutor told the trial.
Italy’s top court later ruled that Egypt’s failure to cooperate should not prevent the case from moving forward, saying a foreign state’s refusal to assist an investigation could not be allowed to block accountability for torture.