An Italian court on September 28 convicted three Egyptian security officials over the 2016 kidnapping of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body was found days after he disappeared in Cairo.
The three officials Major Magdi Sharif, Police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal were each sentenced to 10 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Regeni. A fourth defendant, Major General Tarek Sabir, was acquitted.
Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016. His body was discovered nearly a week later, with a post-mortem examination showing that he had suffered extensive torture before his death.
In the ruling, the court found Sharif, who served with Egypt’s General Intelligence, Helmy and Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo, guilty of involvement in the kidnapping. The court also dismissed a charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder against Sharif.Prosecutors had requested a life sentence for Sharif and 17 years and six months in prison for each of the other three defendants.
Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said the verdict was achieved despite what he described as less than wholehearted cooperation from Egyptian authorities.
