The four Egyptian intelligence officers who are on trial in absentia in Rome for torturing to death Giulio Regeni in January-February 2016 allegedly wove a web around the Italian Cambridge University doctoral researcher before pouncing and abducting him for his work on independent trade unions, prosecutors told the second hearing of the trialsMonday.
"The overall picture that has emerged is that of a web that slowly, between September 2015 and 25 January 2016, was tightened around Regeni by the defendants," said deputy prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco in the courtroom while illustrating the list of witnesses to be heard in the trial against the four Egyptian officers, with the latter date being his last appearance in public before his abduction, on the Cairo metro.
"A web created both through the acquisition of his passportwithout his knowledge, house searches in his absence, stalking, photographs and videos, and through the 'friends' Regeni frequented who reported, in real time, to the defendants about their meetings with the Italian", Colaiocco said, referring to the street union leaders who pretended the 28-year-old Friuliborn student as a spy.
The prosecutor also stressed that they will need the Italian foreign ministry to work with them to call and hear Egyptian witnesses for the trial.
"We say it from now on: we will need the fruitful work of theMinistry of Foreign Affairs, which will have to elicit thecooperation of the Egyptian authorities.
"Only the Egyptian police, in fact, can serve the papers andgive the go-ahead to hear at trial the 27 witnesses on our list living in Egypt.
"This cooperation will be crucial for a complete and exhaustive reconstruction of the facts'.
Egypt has so far stonewalled the investigations amid a long string of repeated empty promises of cooperation from President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Among other things, they have consistently withheld the addresses and contact details of the four officers, a fact that led to a long delay before Italy's high court said it could goahead without them being informed officially they were on trial.
Regeni's parents, meanwhile, were asked about Premier GiorgiaMeloni's assurances that "we will go forward for truth andjustice" after meeting Sisi on a 7.4 billion euro EU-Egyptmigrant-development deal in Cairo Sunday.
"We do not comment on Prime Minister Meloni's words, we just say that in our country fortunately there is the separation of powers, unlike what happens in regimes" , said Alessandra Ballerini, lawyer of Giulio Regeni's parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Defendi.
Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University doctoral researcher into independent Egyptian street trade unions, disappeared on the Cairo metro on January 25, 2016 and his mutilated, semi-naked body was found in a ditch on the road to Alexandria on February 3.
The four Egyptian security officers, National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, have been put on trial in absentia after Cairo long stonewalled the case and refused to give their addresses or contact numbers.
This caused a long delay, when ended in September when the Constitutional Court ruled that the trial could proceed even though the officers have not been formally notified of the proceedings against them.
Regeni's torture and murder sparked global outrage, with more than 4,600 academics signing a petition calling for an investigation into his death and into the many disappearances that take place in Egypt each month.
On January 25 last Italy marked the eighth anniversary of Regeni's disappearance with events titled All The Chickens ComeHome To Roost referring to the long-awaited Rome trial.
Regeni is believed to have been killed after a street seller union head posed him as an alleged spy, and due to the politically sensitive nature of his doctoral research for the British university.
Regeni, from a small town near Udine in northeastern Italy, was tortured so badly that his mother Paola Deffendi said she could only recognize him "from the tip of his nose".
Deffendi said "all the evil in the world" was visited on herson's body.
His body, according to an Italian autopsy, showed signs of extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe beating;
extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assaultwith a stick;
more than two dozen bone fractures, among them seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms, and shoulder blades;
multiple stab wounds on the body including the soles of the feet, possibly from an ice pick or awl-like instrument;
numerous cuts over the entire body made with a sharpinstrument suspected to be a razor;
extensive cigarette burns;
larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard and hot object;
to brain haemorrhage;
and a broken cervicalvertebra, which ultimately caused death.
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