Giulio Regeni, three Egyptian intelligence agents sentenced to 10 years for kidnapping

The First Assize Court of Rome has sentenced three Egyptian secret service agents to 10 years in prison for the kidnapping of Giulio Regeni, which occurred in Cairo on January 25, 2016. The fourth defendant, a police general, was acquitted. Judge Paola Roja read the verdict after more than eight hours of deliberation, imposing the same sentence on Colonels Uhsam Helmi and Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.

The judges dismissed the murder charge, for which the prosecution had sought life imprisonment for Sharif and sentences of 17 and a half years for the others. The sentence also includes a permanent ban from public office and provisional compensation: 200,000 euros to Regeni's parents, 100,000 to his sister, and 150,000 to the Italian government. The parents of the researcher, leaving the crowded courtroom, simply stated: "We are satisfied."

The trial, overseen by prosecutors Francesco Lo Voi and Sergio Colaiocco, concludes 10 years and 7 months after Regeni's body was found along the road between Cairo and Alexandria. The four defendants, belonging to the Egyptian National Security, have been formally untraceable for years and were tried in absentia.

The case of Giulio Regeni began on January 25, 2016, when the 28-year-old researcher from Friuli disappeared in Cairo, where he was conducting a study on Egyptian independent trade unions for the University of Cambridge. According to the prosecution, Regeni entered that day "into a gray area where the law ceases to exist," being abducted by agents of the Egyptian secret services. His body, showing clear signs of torture, was found on February 3, 2016, along a desert road.

The case immediately triggered a diplomatic crisis between Italy and Egypt, with Rome demanding truth and justice while Cairo provided contradictory versions, initially even claiming that Regeni had died in a traffic accident. Giulio's parents began a legal and institutional battle lasting a decade, meeting with representatives from both governments and facing continuous obstacles, never giving in to feelings of hatred or revenge.

The Italian investigation identified four agents of the Egyptian National Security as responsible for the abduction, torture, and murder. The trial, the longest and most difficult in the career of Deputy Prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco, was based on the idea that Regeni had been the victim of "a methodical, cold, organized exercise of violence" due to "a mistaken perception of hostile intelligence activity," despite the researcher not being a spy but merely a young scholar. Today's verdict closes the judicial chapter but opens that of compensations and possible extraditions.