Italian court convicts three Egyptian officials in Regeni case

An Italian court convicted three Egyptian security officials on Monday, 28 September, in the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian researcher who disappeared in Cairo in 2016 and was later found dead. Reuters reported that the court sentenced the three men to ten years in prison and acquitted a fourth defendant. The trial was held in their absence, after years of obstacles over notifying the defendants and securing their attendance.

Regeni was a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge. He vanished on 25 January 2016; his body was discovered about a week later with signs of extensive torture. Italian prosecutors had sought far longer sentences in the case. The court’s decision records an initial criminal judgment, while the precise scope of each conviction and any appeal will need to be read from the full ruling.

The case has weighed on relations between Italy and Egypt for more than a decade. The verdict gives Regeni’s family a formal answer from an Italian court, but it does not mean the convicted officials are in Italian custody or that a sentence will immediately be served. Further legal steps and the response from Cairo remain to be seen.