(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 10 - Rome prosecutors said Thursday they
had completed their probe into the 2016 abduction, torture and
murder in Cairo of Italian student Giulio Regeni and were ready
to file charges against four out of five Egyptian intelligence
service members relating to the case.
The prosecutors sent notification of the closure of the probe to
the four while they asked for the case to be shelved against the
fifth.
Completion of a probe in Italy normally precedes a request to
indict.
Possible charges are, variously, multi-aggravated abduction of a
person, complicity in aggravated murder and complicity in
grievous bodily harm.
The four who risk trial are General Tariq Sabir and three
subordinates: Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Uhsam Helmi, and
Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.
The latter is accused of grievous bodily harm and actually
murdering Cambridge doctoral researcher Regeni.
Sharif would have been facing possible torture charges if the
case had taken place after that crime was introduced into
Italian criminal law, in July 2017.
The shelving of the case against Mahmoud Najem, the fifth spy,
was requested due to insufficient evidence to support the case
against him.
The Rome prosecutors said 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.
He suffered "the permanent loss of multiple organs" in the
torture, they said, also suffering "numerous traumatic lesions
to the head, face, back and lower limbs".
One of five witnesses told prosecutors "I saw Giulio handcuffed
on the floor with signs of torture on his chest," Rome assistant
prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco told the parliamentary commission of
inquiry into the case.
The communication of the end of the probe was made to
court-appointed Italian lawyers, since the Egyptian security
service members have not stood as possible suspects in the case,
and may be tried in absentia in Italy.
The lawyers and their clients now have 20 days to present
evidence for their defence and eventual requests to be
interviewed by investigators.
Rome prosecutors told their Egyptian counterparts on November 30
they were ready to wrap up the probe
and were set to charge members of Egypt's security apparatus.
The Rome prosecutors said they had the necessary proof and
witness statements against the secret service members accused of
abducting Regeni in January 2016.
Egyptian prosecutors said they did not agree with their Roman
colleagues, who are led by Michele Prestipino.
Egypt's prosecutor general, Hamada al Sawi, said "there is
insufficient evidence to prove the charges".
Regeni's parents, Paola and Claudio, said they "noted the
umpteenth fruitless meeting between the two prosecutor's
offices".
They said "the paths of the two sets of prosecutors have never
been so divided.
"In these years we have suffered wounds and outrages of all
kinds from the Egyptian side, they have abducted, tortured and
killed our son, they have thrown mud and discredit on him, they
have lied, insulted and deceived not only us but the whole
country".
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, where he was previously last seen, the witnesses
said, and later at another barracks where young foreigners are
usually taken.
Rome prosecutors told their Cairo counterparts about these
witness statements, but the Egyptian magistrates rejected the
statements as allegedly unreliable.
Regeni was found dead in a ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria
highway on February 3, 2016, a week after disappearing on the
Cairo metro. 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
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.
Premier Giuseppe Conte said the deal was on a separate level
from cooperation on the Regeni case.
Ex-premier Matteo Renzi, who was in office when Regeni died, has
called for Italy to send a special envoy to Egypt to urge the
Sisi regime to enable the trial of the secret service members.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has repeatedly promised
to help Italy get to the truth about the murder.
Amnesty International says Regeni is just one of countless
critics of the regime to be 'disappeared' every year.
Prestipino, the lead Rome prosecutor, on Thursday thanked the
Regeni family for its "tenacity" in pursuing the truth about
their son's murder.
"I thank the family which pursued its cause with tenacity,"
Prestipino told the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the
case.
Prestipino's assistant, Colaiocco, told the panel that the
"action of defensive investigation" deployed by the family's
lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, "was decisive".
Ballerini said at a press conference at the Lower House Thursday
that "human rights are not negotiable with oil, weapons and
money. And that is shown by the Regeni family. We shall want the
same firmness and abnegation on the part of those who govern us,
so that they prove that justice is not to be bartered away. That
is a starting point, it has taken five years (to achieve it)."
Regeni's mother Paola Deffendi said "no one would have thought
we would get where we are today. Today is an important stage for
Italian democracy and for Egypt. Nothing will stop us. Our
family fight has become a fight of civilisation for human
rights, which is as if Giulio were acting himself. Giulio has
become a mirror that shines all over the world, showing how
human rights are violated in Egypt every day".
Deffendi said "we ask the commission of inquiry to clear up
Italian responsibilities, we refer to all those grey areas. What
happened in the Italian institutions from that January 25 to
February 3? How come Giulio, an Italian citizen, was not saved
in a country that was friendly and which continues to be
friendly?"
She said that otherwise, "all the Italians who go abroad may
well say they do not feel safe".
She added, on her video link with the House press conference:
"The 'good' media should work on Egypt, should recount Egypt,
and that way we will help the Egyptian people too. Carry out
investigative journalism, ask politicians 'what are you doing,
what is Premier Conte doing for the truth about Giulio? And
Foreign Minister Di Maio? Bilateral relations with Egypt have
become ever more a friendship".
Regeni's father Claudio called for Italy to again withdraw its
ambassador from Cairo, saying that the two countries had
recently seen a "normalisation of relations and the development
of mutual interests in the economic, financial and military
fields, as shown by the recent sale of the frigates, and in
tourism, avoiding any clash".
He said the search for the truth of his son's death had been
placed "on a secondary level" with respect to these interests.
(ANSA).