Murder of Giulio Regeni

Discovery of the body

Regeni's mutilated and half-naked corpse was found in a ditch alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway on the outskirts of Cairo on February 3, 2016. His recovered body showed signs of extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe beating; extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault with a stick; more than two dozen bone fractures, among them seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms, and shoulder blades; multiple stab wounds on the body including the soles of the feet, possibly from an ice pick or awl-like instrument; numerous cuts over the entire body made with a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor; extensive cigarette burns; a larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard and hot object; a brain hemorrhage; and a broken cervical vertebra, which ultimately caused death.

Investigations

Italian and Egyptian officials conducted separate autopsies on Regeni's corpse with an Egyptian forensic official reporting on March 1, 2016, that he was interrogated and tortured for up to seven days at intervals of 10–14 hours before he was finally killed. The Egyptian autopsy findings have still not been made public. A 300-page report of the Italian autopsy findings has been handed over to the public prosecutor's office in Rome and denies earlier reports of signs of electric shocks administered to Regeni's genitals.

On March 24, 2016, Egyptian police killed in a shoot out four men who were allegedly responsible for kidnapping Regeni. According to a Facebook post from the official page of the Ministry of the Interior, the gang specialized in kidnapping foreigners and stealing their money. In a raid on the flat of one of the gang members, the Egyptian police claim they found various items that belonged to Regeni including his passport and student photo IDs. However, the New Cairo prosecutor's office later denied that the criminal gang was involved in his murder. Regeni's passport and the other documents were handed over to Italian prosecutors on November 1st, same year, during a "positive" meeting in Cairo.

On June 8, 2016, Italian news agency ANSA reported that Regeni's tutors at Cambridge University had declined to collaborate with the inquest into his murder, to the disappointment of investigators and Regeni's family. This had been anticipated by coverage in the Italian weekly L'Espresso on June 7, 2016, which reported that Regeni's tutor Maha Abdelrahman had followed advice from University lawyers not to collaborate with the inquest. The University of Cambridge strongly rejected the claims in a statement released to Varsity, the Cambridge student newspaper.

Accusations against the Egyptian government

Due to Regeni's research activities and left-wing political leanings, the Egyptian police are strongly suspected of involvement in his murder in Europe, although Egypt's media and government deny this, alleging secret undercover agents belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt carried out the crime in order to embarrass the Egyptian government and destabilize relations between Italy and Egypt.

On April 21, 2016 Reuters reported three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources independently claiming Regeni was in police custody at some time before his death. According to these sources he was picked up by plainclothes police officers near Gamal Abdel Nasser metro station together with another Egyptian man on the evening of Jan 25th. Both men were then taken in a white minibus with police license plates to Izbakiya police station in downtown Cairo. Shadowing foreigners was later dismissed by a Homeland Security official and the Interior Ministry as day-to-day work bearing no implications, and Egyptian general prosecutor Nabeel Sadek confirmed that Cairo police had received a report on Giulio Regeni on January 7, 2016.

On December 7, 2016, a joint statement of Egyptian and Italian prosecutors, released following a two-day summit in Rome, stated that Egyptian prosecutors had questioned the policemen who investigated Regeni's death in January, as well as those who killed the four gang members in March.

Reactions of the international community

The gruesome torture and murder of Giulio Regeni sparked global outrage, with more than 4,600 academics signing a petition calling for an investigation into his death and into the many disappearances that take place in Egypt each month, while on February 24, 2016, Amnesty International Italy launched a campaign "Verità per Giulio Regeni" (Truth about Giulio Regeni). UK Parliament petition No. 120832 was created by Hannah Waddilove, a former Giulio Regeni's colleague at Oxford Analytica, in February 2016. UK involvement was solicited on the rationale that freedom of thought, expression, and press are not meaningful if they cannot be backed by freedom of research. Hence active steps were expected from the U.K. in order to protect operations carried out by personnel belonging to its universities. The petition reached 10,000 signatures next April, the Parliament renewed their offer of assistance. An online petition was also started on Change.org that received more than 100,000 signatures.

On March 10, 2016, the European Parliament in Strasbourg passed a motion for a resolution condemning the torture and killing of Giulio Regeni and the ongoing human rights abuses of the al-Sisi government in Egypt. The resolution was passed with an overwhelming majority.

In April 2016, Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt due to a lack of co-operation, during the investigation, from the Egyptian authorities.

In May 2016, Italian weekly magazine L'espresso set up a secure platform based on GlobaLeaks technology to collect testimonials about torture and human rights abuse from Egyptian whistleblowers – and to seek justice for Giulio Regeni and for every Regeni in Egypt.

On January 25, 2017, first anniversary of his disappearance, thousands of people gathered to remember Giulio Regeni in Rome, Milano, Fiumicello, and other Italian towns.