Regeni tortured with sticks, burns says medical examiner

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 24 - Giulio Regein was tortured by being beaten with sticks and suffering burns, the prosecution's medical consultant told the Rome trial in absentia of four Egyptian security officers in the January-February 2016 torture and death of the 28-year-old Italian Cambridge university doctoral researcher into Egyptian street seller unions Wednesday.
    Regeni suffered various forms of torture in Cairo, coroner and prosecution consultant Vittorio Finceschi told the trial of National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.
    He suffered punches, kicks, burns, beating on the soles of the feet and painful handcuffing of his wrists and ankles, said Finceschi, who carried out the autopsy on the body.
    On February 6 2016 the forensic expert examined the body of the researcher, whose mutilated and half-naked corpse was found dumped in a ditch on the road from Cairo to Alexandria on February 3 eight years ago, nine days after his disappearance on the Cairo metro on January 25.
    Regeni, from Fiumicello, a town near Udine in northeastern Italy, was tortured so badly that his mother Paola Deffendi said she could only recognise him "from the tip of his nose".
    Deffendi said "all the evil in the world" was visited on her son's body.
    The four officers are on trial even though it has proved impossible, due to Egyptian lack of cooperation, to inform them of the proceedings.
    Regeni, is believed to have been killed due to the politically sensitive nature of his research for Girton Collega at the British university, into independent street vendor trade unions.
    One of the union chiefs reportedly fingered him as spy.
    His body, according to a Finceschi's autopsy, showed major signs of extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe beating; extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault with 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 sharp instrument suspected to be a razor; extensive cigarette burns; a larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard and hot object; a brain haemorrhage; and a broken cervical vertebra, which ultimately caused death. (ANSA).