Regeni trial, the Prosecutor's Office asks for life imprisonment and three sentences

The Prosecutor's Office is asking for a life sentence for Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, believed to be the man who physically killed the Friulian researcher, and 17 and a half years for Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi and Tareq Sabyr. The 4 have been untraceable for years. The 28-year-old disappeared from Cairo on January 25, 2016: his lifeless body, with signs of torture, was found on February 3. Regeni family lawyer: "Few would have bet that we would have reached a trial and a sentence. It is already a victory but we are not satisfied"

More than 10 years have passed, 3,890 days to be precise, since the body of 28-year-old researcher Giulio Regeni was found lifeless in Cairo, Egypt, with clear signs of violence and torture: it was February 3, 2016. It had been seized on January 25. Today, 28 September, the sentence arrives from the first Court of Assizes of Rome, called to decide on the request made by the Prosecutor's Office against the four defendants for the murder of Regeni, all men of the Egyptian secret services. They have never appeared in court and have been formally untraceable and untraceable for years, due to the lack of Egyptian cooperation. For one of them, Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, believed to be the man who physically killed the young Italian, prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco is asking for a life sentence. The others, Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi and Tareq Sabyr, risk 17 and a half years in prison. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, through the State Attorney's Office, asked the four defendants for compensation of two million euros.

Regeni family lawyer: "This is already a victory but we are not satisfied"

Giulio Regeni's parents and sister are present in the classroom in Piazzale Clodio. "We are here today despite this very tiring, uphill obstacle course. Thanks to everyone, to the media escort and to the yellow people. Few would have bet that we would have reached a trial and then a sentence. This is already a victory but we are not satisfied", said the lawyer Alessandra Ballerini, lawyer for the Regeni family. "Everything that the Egyptian regime could do to prevent this process, it did, but 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. To those who asked her for a comment on the recent visit of Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to Egypt, with President Al Sisi, she replied: "It doesn't concern us, because ours is a democracy: there is the separation of powers foreseen by our Constitution". The secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein was also present outside the court in Rome.

Pm Colaiocco: "Egypt has decided to cover Regeni's tormentors"

Prosecutor Colaiocco, in the hearing in which he formulated the request for penalties (last June 23), spoke of "a procedural truth built through documentary evidence, declarative evidence, technical-scientific evidence, external feedback, independent convergences, trial verifications". The trial was strongly desired by the prosecutors of Piazzale Clodio, against "the silence and lies" of Egypt which "decided to cover up and protect the torturers", providing convenient versions or "outright fakes" and covering up evidence. For the prosecutors, what is being judged "is not the simple suppression of a human life", but "the methodical, cold, organized exercise of violence on a defenseless man" and "the kidnapping of a person deprived of any guarantee".

The motive

The motive, according to the Prosecutor's Office, lies in Regeni's "mistaken perception of hostile intelligence activity". "The kidnapping and subsequent torture are placed, in this perspective, as tools used to obtain information that the victim was not able to provide. The reconstruction of the Egyptian apparatus proves, in the light of the elements acquired, to be radically unfounded. The methods of torture themselves, in their duration and brutality, confirm the persecutory dynamic, up to the tragic final outcome. What emerges is a collaborative responsibility with a progressive structure, in which each accused occupies a specific functional role", said the prosecutors in the this summer's indictment.

The 007 defense claims that terrorist groups are behind the murder

The defenders of the four accused 007s from Cairo have always maintained that Regeni was never "kidnapped by members of National Security, because there was no interest on Al Sisi's part in ruining relations with Italy". The affair, they claim, was instead "the work of terrorist groups that operated in Egypt in those years to hinder Italy's energy policy".

The Giulio Regeni case

Giulio Regeni was born in Trieste on 15 January 1988. He was in Cairo as part of the doctorate he was carrying out at the University of Cambridge: he was working on a project on the transformations of the world of work in Egypt and on the independent Egyptian trade unions. He had been in the country since September 2015. Traces of him disappeared on January 25, 2016, after he left home to go to Tahrir Square, on the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. He disappears near a subway stop, not far from the city center. His body, half naked and with signs of torture, was found on February 3 along the highway that connects Cairo with Giza. The investigation by the Italian authorities begins immediately, in parallel with the red herrings: Cairo puts forward various hypotheses for Regeni's murder, from the accident to passion murder and drug dealing. Until the killing of five alleged murder suspects on March 24, 2016.