Three men have been convicted in connection with the death of a Cambridge University student who was brutally tortured inside an Egyptian prison described as the “cemetery of the living” a decade ago.
Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian, disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016. His body was discovered beside a motorway a week later, showing signs of severe torture and a broken neck.
An autopsy conducted in Rome found that the postgraduate researcher had been beaten, burned, stabbed and flogged over four days.
All of his fingers and toes had been broken, and he died after suffering a fatal neck fracture.
Egypt maintained that ordinary criminals were behind the killing. Italy, however, argued that Regeni had become a target of the state because his research focused on the politically sensitive issue of trade unions.
Ten years after Regeni’s death, four men were tried in absentia in Rome. Those convicted are unlikely ever to be extradited to Italy to serve their sentences.
In a ruling delivered on Monday, the judge found Major Magdi Sharif of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Cairo police investigations chief Colonel Ather Kamal and police Colonel Hisham Helmy guilty of Regeni’s aggravated kidnapping.
Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, was acquitted of the same charge. The judge also rejected the allegation that Sharif had conspired to commit aggravated murder.
Giulio Regeni (pictured) was found dead in Egypt after being tortured
Paola Deffendi, Giulio Regeni’s mother, center, reacts with emotion as she leaves a courtroom after three of four Egyptian security officials were convicted to 10 years in prison for the abduction and murder of her son in Cairo in 2016, in Rome, Monday, September 28, 2026
None of the four men has publicly addressed the allegations, while Egypt continues to deny that the state played any role in Regeni’s death.
Prosecutors had requested a life sentence for Sharif and 17 years and six months in prison for each of the other three defendants.
“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said. He added that he would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.
Alessandra Ballerini, a lawyer representing the Regeni family, welcomed Monday’s verdict.
“From today, people around the world can feel safer,” she said. “Impunity can be defeated and democracies can place limits on arbitrary power.”
One of the final people known to have seen Regeni alive gave evidence to the court in 2024.
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The Egyptian man, whose identity has been protected by court order, said he was arrested on the same day as Regeni and first encountered him at a Cairo police station.
He said the two men were later blindfolded and placed in the same car.
“He kept asking for a lawyer, speaking Italian. I knew the language because I had worked for an Italian company, so I mentioned this to the people in the car. They punched me and said, ‘Do you want to be a translator? He speaks Arabic better than you.’”
He continued: “We were taken to a state security office known as the ‘cemetery of the living’. Giulio was taken to the section for foreigners. I never saw him again, but I could hear him being beaten because we were in adjacent rooms. When it comes to torturing people, they don’t discriminate.”
‘They tied our hands, beat us, tied us with handcuffs attached to the bed, and then used electroshock therapy.’
Relations between Italy and Egypt deteriorated sharply following the killing, but ties have gradually recovered in recent years despite continuing demands by Regeni’s family and rights groups for accountability.
Regeni was studying at Cambridge University at the time of his death
Paola (C-L) and Claudio (C-R), parents of Giulio Regeni, and sister Irene (3-L) hold a banner reading ‘Truth for Giulio Regeni’ as they demonstrate outside the Palace of Justice on the day of the first hearing in the trial over the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in 2016, in Rome, Italy, 20 February 2024
The Rome court said the three men should pay damages to Regeni’s family and the Italian state. Ballerini said the government should demand payment and sever relations with Egypt.
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.
The Egyptians blamed the murder on a gang of criminals, who were subsequently killed in a shootout with police.
Italian prosecutors argued that Regeni was abducted and tortured by Egyptian security officials because of his academic research into independent unions, a sensitive subject in Cairo.
The trial opened in 2021 but was delayed by legal disputes over whether the defendants had been properly notified of the proceedings.
Italy tried on around 30 occasions, through diplomatic and government channels, to obtain the addresses of the suspects, but never received any answer, a prosecutor told the trial.
Italy’s top court later ruled that Egypt’s failure to cooperate should not prevent the case from moving forward, saying a foreign state’s refusal to assist an investigation could not be allowed to block accountability for torture.
