Regeni killed by Egypt security apparatus says panel

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 1 - Italian student Giulio Regeni was abducted, tortured and killed by Egypt's security apparatus, a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the early 2016 incident said in its final report Wednesday.
    The responsibility for the 28-year-old Friuli-born Cambridge doctoral researcher's death lies with Egyptian National Security Agency (NSA) officers, whose proxy trial in Rome has stalled due to the inability to inform them they are being tried, said the commission.
    The commission said Rome prosecutors had "minutely reconstructed" how the officers abducted, tortured and killed Regeni.
    It said that Egypt should now be called to "face up to its responsibility" in the case.
    The first hearing in the trial in absentia of the four Egyptian security agents took place in Rome on October 14, when a Court of Assizes judge ruled it could not proceed until the defendants received notice of being on trial, sending the case back to a preliminary hearings judge.
    Regeni was found dead in a ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria highway on February 3, 2016, a week after disappearing. He had been tortured so badly that his mother said she only recognised him by the tip of his nose.
    He had been fingered as a spy by the head of Cairo street sellers' unions, the politically sensitive issue that was the subject of his doctoral research for Cambridge University.
    The Regenis have appealed to the EU for help in finding the truth about their son's slaying and have condemned continued Italian arms sales to Egypt including two frigates.
    The case may collapse entirely if the four officers are not located, judicial sources said after the October 14 ruling.
    The judge said it could not be "presumed" that the four knew about the proceedings because of the heavy media coverage of the case, as a previous judge had ruled.
    It said the four had to be "effectively" informed of the case against them.
    The new hearing before the preliminary hearings judge (GUP) will take place by the end of January, judicial sources said, and the trial will be suspended entirely if the judge rules, after a request to Egypt, that the four officers cannot be located.
    The case will again be examined by the GUP who in May indicted the four officers and said that had avoided standing trial on purpose.
    The October 14 ruling was a blow to the closely watched first international judicial examination of Egypt's controversial national security policy which has brought widespread condemnation from human rights groups.
    Alessandra Ballerini, the Regeni family lawyer, told the court on October 14 that fifteen of Regeni's bones were fractured and five of his teeth smashed, while numbers had been carved into his skin.
    National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, were on trial at the third Court of Assizes in Rome.
    In an important signal, the Italian premier's office decided to stand as a civil plaintiff in the case.
    Also standing as plalnitiffs were Regeni's parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Deffendi, who were in court along with Regeni's sister Irene.
    Rome prosecutors say that Regeni, 28, was tortured for days, resulting in "acute physical suffering" by being subjected to kicks, punches, beaten with sticks and bats and cut with sharp objects, and also being burned with red-hot objects and slammed into walls.
    His neck was then snapped in a fatal blow.
    Egypt's prosecutor general, Hamada al Sawi, has said "there is insufficient evidence to prove the charges".
    At various times Egypt has advanced differing explanations for Regeni's death including a car accident, a gay lovers' tiff and abduction and murder by an alleged kidnapping gang that was wiped out after Regeni's documents were planted in their lair.
    Lack of cooperation on the case by Egypt led to Rome's temporarily withdrawing its ambassador from Cairo for a spell.
    (ANSA).