Today 3,890 days will have passed since Giulio Regeni was found dead in Egypt, with evident signs of violence and torture on his body. Today, the first procedural 'truth' will arrive about that death with the sentence of the first Court of Assizes of Rome called to decide on the request made by the Prosecutor's Office against the four defendants, all belonging to the Cairo secret services.
For them the deputy Sergio Colaiocco, on 23 June, asked for a life sentence and three sentences of 17 and a half years in prison for what happened between January and February 2016. In particular, life imprisonment was requested for Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif - believed to be the man who physically killed Regeni - and other sentences for Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi and Tareq Sabyr.
'This trial does not deliver an intuitive or emotional truth - the prosecution representative stated in the courtroom -. Delivers a procedural truth built through documentary evidence; declarative evidence; technical-scientific tests; external feedback; independent convergences; hearing checks'.
'We are here today despite this very tiring, uphill obstacle course. Thanks to everyone, the media escort and the yellow people. Few would have bet that we would have a trial and then a sentence. This is already a victory but we are not satisfied.' The lawyer Alessandra Ballerini said this before entering the courtroom in Piazzale Clodio together with Giulio Regeni's parents and sister. 'Everything the Egyptian regime could do to prevent this process, it did, however this family is resistant. The Regenis did it for us and if today our rights are worth a little more it is thanks to them,' he added.
'It doesn't concern us, because ours is a democracy: there is the separation of powers provided for by our Constitution.' Thus the lawyer Ballerini, responding to those who asked her about the recent visit of the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, to Egypt with President Al Sisi. The secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, was also present outside the court in Rome.
A trial stubbornly wanted by the prosecutors of Piazzale Clodius against the 'silence and lies' of Egypt which 'decided to cover up and protect the torturers' by providing convenient versions or 'outright fakes' and covering up evidence. For the prosecutors in Piazzale Clodio, 'what is being judged here is not the simple suppression of a human life. What is being judged here is the methodical, cold, organized exercise of violence on a defenseless man. What is being judged here is the kidnapping of a person removed from all guarantees.'
In the courtroom, as always, Giulio's parents will be present, who from day one have asked for 'truth and justice' for the Friulian researcher. 'The Regeni family fought with their bare hands against the regime, but they never lost a shred of dignity,' said their lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, during the trial.
'The Regeni family has never allowed itself to be contaminated by hatred. They never sought revenge or punishment, they only said 'truth and justice'', added Ballerini, recalling the path faced by the researcher's family, marked by institutional meetings and continuous obstacles. 'Since Giulio disappeared, the family has been spared no torment. We had to meet government officials, even Egyptian representatives, nothing was spared her. We have suffered persecution and threats.'
Giulio's ordeal began on January 25th ten years ago. 'That day - explained the Prosecutor's Office - the Italian researcher entered, unaware, into a gray area in which law ceases to exist and only naked force takes its place. From that moment Giulio is no longer a person - say the investigators -. It becomes a seized body.
He becomes a subject to bend, he becomes a recipient of violence'. According to the accusation, Regeni was deprived 'not only of his freedom and life' but was 'deprived of his very condition as a human being with rights. It was placed in a space where law, control, defense and limits no longer existed. A space in which power had taken the form of pure arbitrariness'.
It wasn't common criminals who did it all, it wasn't men from the underworld. They were men of the state, belonging to the security apparatus. These are 'public officials of the highest rank, subjects fully aware of their institutional duties, first of all that of guaranteeing legality and not bending it to illicit ends'.
As regards the motive for so much violence, the Prosecutor's Office speaks of 'a mistaken perception of hostile intelligence activity' but Giulio - it was reiterated - 'was not a spy', he was just a 27-year-old boy who tried to do his job as a researcher as best as possible.
