(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 20 - Rome prosecutors on Wednesday
requested that four Egyptian intelligence-service officials be
sent to trial for the 2016 abduction, torture and murder of
Italian student Giulio Regeni in Egypt.
General Tariq Sabir and three subordinates, Athar Kamel Mohamed
Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi, and Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, are
accused of crimes that range from aggravated involvement in
homicide to kidnapping and grevious bodily harm.
Rome prosecutors say that Regeni 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.
The suspects are likely to be tried in absentia in Italy if the
indictment requests are upheld.
Egypt's prosecutor general, Hamada al Sawi, has said "there is
insufficient evidence to prove the charges".
Witnesses have told the Rome prosecutors that Regeni was picked
up by members of the Egyptian security services.
The witnesses, deemed reliable by the prosecutors, say the
28-year-old Cambridge doctoral researcher was abducted by agents
of the Egyptian National Security Agency on January 25, 2016,
the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that
ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and taken to at least
two barracks in the subsequent hours.
The young man from Friuli was seen in a barracks near the Dokki
metro stop in Cairo, the witnesses said, and later at another
barracks where young foreigners are usually taken.
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.
At various times Egypt has advanced differing explanations for
his 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.
The student was researching Cairo street sellers unions for the
British university, a politically sensitive subject.
The head of the street hawkers union had fingered Regeni as a
possible spy.
Lack of cooperation on the case by Egypt led to Rome's
temporarily withdrawing its ambassador from Cairo.
Rome recently drew condemnation from Regeni's parents by
announcing the sale of two frigates to Egypt. (ANSA).
Trial requested for 4 Egyptian spies over Regeni murder
Friuli-born Cambridge student tortured to death in early 2016