ROME (AP) — A Rome court on Monday set a new date for the trial of four senior Egyptian security officials in the case of the kidnapping, torture and murder of an Italian doctoral student in Cairo in 2016.
Lawyers and relatives of Giulio Regeni, whose mutilated body was discovered on a road in Egypt, said the trial for kidnapping, torture and murder would begin in the Rome court on Feb. 20.
This follows a September ruling by Italy’s Constitutional Court that defendants can only be prosecuted even if they had obtained formalization after the Egyptian government refused to provide them with their addresses.
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Regeni’s parents have been seeking justice for the murder of their 28-year-old son for years.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Regeni’s mother, Paola Deffendi, told reporters after emerging from the courthouse after the trial date was set.
Still, “the remains,” said Claudio Regeni, father of the slain student.
Regeni was investigating street vendors’ unions in Cairo when he was abducted, shortly after being spotted near a metro station in the Egyptian capital. After his body was discovered, the Egyptian government claimed that a gang of thieves had killed the Cambridge University student.
In 2022, Italy’s criminal court rejected prosecutors’ efforts to restart the trial of Egyptian defendants after a lower court ruled that the trial might not take place because the defendants had not been officially informed of an order requiring them to stand trial.
The issue has strained relations between Italy and Egypt, the best friend in Italy’s efforts to combat foreign terrorism. At one point, Italy withdrew its ambassador to strain Egyptian cooperation in the investigation. Italian prosecutors got the four Egyptians charged, who are the most likely to be tried in absentia.
Regeni’s mother has said her son’s body was so badly mutilated by torture that she only recognized the tip of his nose when she viewed it. Human rights activists have said the marks on his body resembled those resulting from widespread torture in Egyptian Security Agency facilities.
The officials charged through Italian prosecutors are police chief Sherif Magdy; police Maj. Gen. Tareq Sabre, a senior official of the internal security company at the time of Regeni’s abduction; Colonel Hesham Helmy, who served in a security center guilty of tracking down the Cairo community where the Italian lived, and Colonel Acer Kamal, who headed a police section guilty of street operations and discipline.
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