ROME, Sept 28 (Reuters) – An Italian court on Monday convicted three Egyptian security officials of involvement in the 2016 kidnapping of student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body was found days after his disappearance in Cairo.
The three men were sentenced to 10 years in jail, while a fourth Egyptian defendant was acquitted.
Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, vanished in the Egyptian capital on January 25, 2016. His body was found almost a week later, with a post-mortem showing he had been extensively tortured before his death.
In a ruling read out to the court, a judge said Major Magdi Sharif, from Egypt’s General Intelligence, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo were guilty of the “aggravated kidnapping” of Regeni.
The judge acquitted Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, of the same charge and also dismissed the accusation of “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder” leveled against Sharif.
Prosecutors had sought a life term for Sharif and 17 years and six months in jail for the other three.
“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told reporters.
The four men were tried in absentia under Italian legislation allowing the prosecution of crimes committed abroad against Italian citizens.
They have never publicly responded to the accusations and Egypt has denied any state involvement in Regeni’s death.
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.
The Egyptians blamed the murder on a gang of criminals, who were subsequently killed in a shootout with police.
Italian prosecutors argued that Regeni was abducted and tortured by Egyptian security officials because of his academic research into trades unions, a sensitive subject in Cairo.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer, Marco Roberti and Angelo Amante, editing by Alvise Armellini)
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