The trial of four Egyptian police officers implicated in the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in 2016 in Cairo opened in their absence Thursday, October 14 in Rome.
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In January 2016, 28-year-old Italian student Giulio Regeni was abducted by strangers and his body was found tortured and excruciatingly mutilated a few days later in the suburbs of Cairo.
He was researching unions in Egypt, a very sensitive subject in the country.
The charges against the four male members of the National Security - General Tareq Saber, Colonels Aser Kamal and Hicham Helmi, and Major Magdi Cherif - range from kidnapping to conspiracy to commit murder and inflict grievous bodily harm.
The holding of debates threatened
The student's mother, father and sister arrived Thursday morning in the secure room of Rebibbia prison in Rome where Mafia trials are usually held, an AFP journalist noted.
The services of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced, the day before the trial, that the government was acting as a civil party in a symbolic gesture of support for the Regeni family.
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However, there is a threat to the holding of the debates. The Rome Assize Court will have to decide whether the four men have been informed of the proceedings against them or not. Egypt has always refused to provide their contact details to the Italian courts. By law, a trial cannot be held if the accused is not informed of the charges against him and has not had time to prepare his defense.
At a preliminary hearing in May, another magistrate ruled that media coverage of the case had allowed the four defendants to be informed, sending them to justice, but that decision could be overturned on Thursday.
And court-appointed defense lawyer Tranquillino Sarno told AFP that the success of the trial would depend on whether or not key witnesses appeared.
"Tortured for days"
Italian investigators accused Egyptian secret service agents of having "
tortured him for days by inflicting burns, kicks, punches, and using bladed weapons and sticks
" before killing him.
A thesis strongly rejected by Cairo.
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They identified five suspects in 2018, all members of the intelligence services.
The Italian prosecution, which had closed the file of one of the five suspects, believes that the student died of respiratory failure caused by the blows carried by Major Cherif.
Constantly trampling, the affair has long poisoned relations between Cairo and Rome, Italy regularly accusing the Egyptian authorities of not cooperating, or even of leading Italian investigators towards false leads.