Italian court convicts three Egyptian agents for kidnap of Giulio Regeni

A Rome court has convicted three Egyptian security officials in connection with the 2016 kidnapping of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body was discovered on a roadside outside Cairo weeks after he vanished.

Presiding Judge Paola Roja handed down 10-year prison terms on Monday to Major Magdi Sharif of Egypt's General Intelligence service, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former Cairo investigations chief, on charges of aggravated kidnapping, according to Al Jazeera. A fourth man, former state security head Major General Tarek Sabir, was cleared of wrongdoing. The judge also threw out a separate charge accusing Sharif of conspiring to commit aggravated murder.

All four were tried in absentia, and none of the defendants has ever answered the allegations against them, Al Jazeera reported. Given the deep diplomatic rift between Rome and Cairo that has grown out of the case, it is considered improbable that any of the men will actually be handed over to Italian authorities to serve their sentences.

Rome's chief prosecutor, Francesco Lo Voi, told reporters after the verdict that investigators managed to secure the convictions despite what he described as reluctant assistance from Egyptian officials, according to Al Jazeera.

Regeni, a Cambridge University postgraduate student, went missing in Cairo in January 2016 while conducting research on independent trade unions representing street vendors. His body turned up days later along a roadside, bearing signs of severe abuse, including cigarette burns, broken teeth and multiple fractures. A subsequent autopsy concluded he had been tortured before his death. Human rights groups have noted that the pattern of his injuries resembled wounds documented in other cases involving detainees held by Egyptian security services.

Egyptian authorities have consistently denied any role in Regeni's death. Investigators from Italy and Egypt initially worked jointly on the case, but Cairo later claimed the killing was carried out by a criminal gang whose members had subsequently died in a confrontation with police. Egypt has since shifted its position further, saying the identities of those responsible remain unknown.

Italian prosecutors have argued that Egyptian security personnel targeted Regeni specifically because of his academic work examining labor organizing among informal workers in Cairo, a subject viewed as politically sensitive. They have also accused Egyptian authorities of obstructing the investigation by withholding information about the whereabouts of the accused men.

The case was able to proceed in Italian courts under domestic law that permits prosecution of crimes committed against Italian nationals abroad. Still, the legal path to Monday's verdict was not straightforward. An earlier attempt to try the four men was halted in 2021 after the presiding judge raised concerns that the defendants may not have been properly informed they faced charges. Italy's highest court overturned that decision in 2023, ruling that Egypt's lack of cooperation should not be allowed to derail the proceedings. Egyptian officials have rejected the characterization that they failed to cooperate with Italian investigators.

The Regeni case has strained relations between the two countries for nearly a decade, with Italian officials repeatedly pressing Cairo for greater transparency even as diplomatic and economic ties between the nations have continued.