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.
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