Italian researcher Giulio Regeni was killed in Cairo in 2016 (Al Jazeera)

Today, Tuesday, the First Criminal Court in the capital, Rome, begins the retrial of the four Egyptian security officers accused of kidnapping and killing Italian researcher Giulio Regeni.

The four defendants, all of whom are officers in the National Security Service, are Major General Tariq Saber, Colonel Aser Kamel Muhammad Ibrahim, Major Magdy Ibrahim Abdel-Al Sharif, and Captain Hossam Helmy.

The court charged the four defendants with committing the crime of kidnapping, torture, murder, causing serious personal harm, and complicity in premeditated murder against the victim.

In turn, the Italian "Aki" news agency reported from judicial sources that at the top of the lists of witnesses in the case appear the names of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and former Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, in addition to 3 intelligence chiefs who... They held the position over the years.

Giulio Regeni, a graduate student at the British University of Cambridge, disappeared in Cairo in January 2016. His body was found a week later, dumped in one of the entrances to Cairo. An examination of the body showed that he had been subjected to brutal torture before his death.

Italian investigators believe Regeni was kidnapped and killed after being suspected of being a foreign spy. The doctoral student was preparing a university research on Egyptian unions, which is a very sensitive topic in Egypt.

Retrial

Last September, the Supreme Court in Italy authorized the trial of 4 Egyptian security officials in the case of the disappearance and murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, rejecting the excuse that the defendants did not know the accusations against them.

The trial was halted in 2021 after the judge accepted the defenses of lawyers appointed for the defense, stating that the proceedings would be invalid unless there was evidence that the Egyptians knew about the case.

Italian and Egyptian prosecutors investigated the case together, but the two sides later disagreed and reached completely different conclusions.

The suspects never responded publicly to these accusations, while Egyptian police and officials have consistently denied any involvement in Regeni's disappearance and murder.

The Italian prosecutor told the court in 2021 that Italy had tried on about 30 occasions through diplomatic and governmental channels to obtain the addresses of suspects but had received no answer.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies + Italian press