ROME COURT CONVICTS THREE EGYPTIANS OVER GIULIO REGENI'S DEATH

A court in Rome has convicted three Egyptian security officials over the 2016 kidnapping of Cambridge University student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body was found near Cairo. Colonel Usham Helmi, Colonel Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif were tried in absentia and sentenced on Monday to 10 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping. A fourth defendant, General Tariq Sabir, was acquitted, and all four had denied the charges. Rome prosecutors concluded that Egypt's national security agency was involved in Regeni's abduction and death.

Regeni went missing on 25 January 2016 while researching Egypt's independent trade unions for his PhD, a sensitive topic in the country. His mutilated body was found in a ditch days later, and an autopsy found he had been tortured. One account of his detention said he was held in a facility described as the "cemetery of the living" and that his neck had been broken. Italian and Egyptian prosecutors first investigated the case jointly but reached opposing conclusions, with Egyptian authorities blaming criminal gangs and suggesting a car accident, a failed drug deal or a botched robbery, while denying state involvement.

Rome's chief prosecutor and the Regeni family's lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, welcomed the verdict. Ballerini said: "From today, people around the world can feel safer. Impunity can be defeated and democracies can place limits on arbitrary power." Regeni's family, who have campaigned for a decade for justice, sat in silence in court wearing yellow, their campaign colour. His mother told the Italian parliament in 2018 that she could only identify her son's body by the tip of his nose. It remains unclear whether Egypt will act on the sentences, given the men were convicted in their absence.