Rome court sentences three Egyptian agents to ten years for Giulio Regeni kidnapping
The Rome Assize Court acquitted a fourth defendant and dropped homicide charges, handing ten-year terms in absentia to three intelligence officials over the 2016 Cairo abduction of the Cambridge researcher.
Sentences delivered in absentia
The Rome Assize Court convicted three Egyptian intelligence officers on Monday for the 2016 kidnapping of Italian doctoral researcher Giulio Regeni, sentencing each to ten years in prison in absentia. The court dropped the murder charges sought by prosecutors, convicting Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, Colonel Uhsam Helmi, and Colonel Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim solely for aggravated kidnapping. A fourth defendant, General Tariq Sabir, was acquitted of all charges. Rome Deputy Chief Prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco had requested a life sentence for Sharif for aggravated murder, along with prison terms of 17 and a half years for the other three defendants. The verdict arrived 3,890 days after Regeni's body was found alongside the highway connecting Cairo and Alexandria. None of the defendants attended the trial after Egyptian authorities refused to notify them of the judicial proceedings.
This trial does not deliver an intuitive or emotional truth. It delivers a judicial truth built through documentary evidence, declaratory evidence, technical-scientific evidence, external verification, independent convergence, trial verification.
Disappearance and investigative obstacles
Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student researching independent street vendor unions, disappeared on 25 January 2016 near Cairo's Dokki metro station during the fifth anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising. His body was found nine days later on 3 February 2016 in a roadside ditch, bearing severe injuries including 20 bone fractures, cigarette burns, and extensive bruising. Egyptian officials initially attributed his death to a traffic accident before claiming on 24 March 2016 that security forces had killed a five-member robbery gang responsible for the crime. Italian investigators from ROS and SCO disproved that account after tracing the alleged gang leader's mobile phone to a location 100 kilometres outside Cairo on the night of the abduction. Italian and Egyptian judicial cooperation deteriorated over subsequent years, ending formally on 30 November 2020 before Rome magistrates indicted the four officers in May 2021.
- Giulio Regeni disappears near Dokki metro station in Cairo.
- Regeni's body is discovered showing signs of severe torture along the Cairo-Alexandria highway.
- Egyptian security forces kill a five-member gang and claim they were responsible.
- Rome prosecutors place five Egyptian security members on the official suspect register.
- Judicial cooperation breaks down between Italian and Egyptian prosecutors.
- A Rome preliminary judge orders four Egyptian intelligence officers to stand trial.
- Rome Assize Court convicts three officers to ten years and acquits one.
Family response and diplomatic pressure
Regeni's parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Deffendi, attended the reading of the verdict alongside their daughter Irene and their legal representative Alessandra Ballerini. Following the decision, Ballerini called on the Italian government to demand damages and reconsider its diplomatic relationship with Cairo.
Now our government must also take note, claim compensation for damages as requested by the State Attorney's Office and break relations with a country that, far from being safe, tortures and kills even the citizens of so-called friendly states.
Centre-left opposition lawmakers urged Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to formally demand the extradition of the three convicted officers from Egypt. Regeni's mother had previously stated that the physical trauma inflicted on her son left him recognizable only from the tip of his nose. The family reaffirmed their commitment to legal accountability, referencing earlier statements from President Sergio Mattarella that truth and justice must not yield to compromise.
