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Egyptian Suspects in Murder of Italian Student Likely to Face In-Absentia
Trial

Jamie Dettmer

   Italian prosecutors investigating the 2016 death of an Italian student
   who was killed in Egypt are set to request authorization for a
   trial-in-absentia of several Egyptian security officials, according to
   Italian press reports.
   Italy has no extradition treaty with Cairo. According to Italian
   officials, Egyptian authorities have often stonewalled the two-year
   long probe by investigative magistrates in Rome into the death of
   28-year-old Giulio Regeni.
   The student's badly disfigured and tortured body was discovered in
   February 2016 dumped alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway nine days
   after he disappeared.
   Regeni, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge who was born
   in Friuli, a mountainous northeast Italian region, had been burnt and
   many of his bones broken. Initials were carved into his skin. His
   mother struggled to identify him.
   Spotlight on el-Sissi
   A trial would throw an international spotlight on Egypt's jailing of
   more than 60,000 political opponents and how detainees are treated,
   analysts say.
   Italy's newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera, says Rome
   prosecutors, due to unveil their findings next week, plan to ask for up
   to five intelligence officers to be charged for the murder.
   "It will turn into a trial of the Egypt of [President] Abdel Fattah
   el-Sissi," the paper said.
   Last year, Italian prosecutors said Regeni had been ensnared in a
   "spider's web" spun by the Egyptian security services in the weeks
   before his death.
   Prosecutors Sergio Colaiocco and Michele Prestipino placed five members
   of Egypt's security forces under official investigation for alleged
   involvement in the disappearance of the postgraduate student.
   Egyptian officials have offered multiple explanations for Regeni's
   death, including claims he died as a result of a car accident or
   because of a lovers' quarrel. Later, Egyptian authorities said he had
   been murdered by a crime gang, whose members died in a gunfight with
   police.
   But Italian officials and rights groups, as well as his family, have
   long suspected he died at the hands of Egyptian security officers, who
   suspected he was spying. Regeni's research was into trade unions and he
   interviewed street hawkers for his work, prompting one to tell police
   the Italian was a spy.
   Last year, Colaiocco told an Italian parliamentary commission that
   Egyptian officials had tried on several occasions to mislead
   investigators.

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