Three new witnesses accuse – Regeni murder spies
ROME – Teleghraph: Three new witnesses have accused four Egyptian security apparatus members of torturing and murdering Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo in January-February 2016, Rome prosecutors said Wednesday.
The fresh testimony has emerged in documents filed ahead of the preliminary hearing in absentia on April 29 of National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.
The hearing will weigh Rome prosecutors’ request to indict them for Regeni’s murder.
One of the witnesses has reportedly told the prosecutors that the four staged a “robbery gone wrong” to try to cover up Regeni’s torture and murder.
On January 25, the fifth anniversary of Regeni’s disappearance on the Cairo metro, President Sergio Mattarella demanded a response from Egypt over the Friuli-born student’s torture and murder.
The brutalised body of the Cambridge University doctoral researcher into the politically sensitive topic of Egyptian street unions was found a week later, on February 3, 2016, in a ditch on the road to Alexandria.
He had been tortured so badly his mother said she only recognised him by the tip of his nose.
Regeni’s parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Deffendi, have accused the government of continuing to do business with Egypt, selling Cairo two frigates.
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.
Egypt’s prosecutor general, Hamada al Sawi, has said “there is insufficient evidence to prove the charges”.
The witnesses, deemed reliable by the prosecutors, say Regeni 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 the ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria highway on February 3, 2016, a week after disappearing.
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 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 drew condemnation from Regeni’s parents last summer by announcing the sale of the two frigates to Egypt.
Despite the protests, the $1.2 billion (988 billion euro) sale went ahead in June.
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 about his son’s death had been placed “on a secondary level” with respect to these interests.
Regeni’s mother Paola Deffendi said “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”.
ansamed
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