A Cambridge student who was tortured to death after being mistaken for a foreign spy in Cairo in 2016 had his bones broken and four Egyptian security officers slashed his body with a razor, a court heard.
Giulio Regeni, 28, was beaten with clubs and suffered severe burns, the prosecution’s medical adviser said during the trial of Egyptian intelligence agents in Rome on Wednesday.
It was revealed that the Italian student showed significant signs of extreme torture, including cuts and bruises from severe beatings and more than two dozen bone fractures, including seven broken ribs, all of his fingers and toes, as well as his legs, arms and shoulder blades. .
Regeni’s body also had multiple stab wounds on the soles of his feet, skin cuts made with a sharp object suspected to be a razor blade, and several cigarette burns.
A larger burn mark was seen between the shoulder blades, a chilling sign that the student was branded with a large, burning object.
Giulio Regeni, a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge, (pictured) disappeared in the Egyptian capital in January 2016 at the age of 28. It has been revealed that he suffered broken bones, severe burns and cuts all over his body while he was tortured to death.
Regeni had been in Cairo to research Egypt’s independent unions for his doctoral thesis.
The autopsy revealed that the mutilated Regini had also suffered a brain hemorrhage and a cervical vertebra fracture after his neck was twisted or hit, ultimately causing his death.
Forensic doctor Vittorio Fineschi, who performed the autopsy of the Italian investigator, stated that he had found in the body “almost all the tortures practiced in Egypt.”
Regeni, from Fiumicello, a town near Udine in northeastern Italy, was tortured so brutally that his mother Paola Deffendi said she could only recognize him “from the tip of his nose.”
He added that “all the evil in the world” was inflicted on his son’s body.
Regeni was subjected to horrific abuse at the hands of four Egyptian secret service agents who Italian prosecutors say were involved in the murder but have been unable to locate them to issue a subpoena.
Consequently, they are being tried in absentia. The second and final trial took place in February, attended by Regeni’s mother, father and sister.
The doctoral student was on his way to see a friend when he left his apartment near the Behoos metro station in Cairo on January 25, 2016.
Nine days later, his body was found naked from the waist down and dumped in a ditch near a desert road between Cairo and Alexandria.
His gruesome murder became the first time such an act had happened to a foreign academic researcher working in Cairo.
Regeni had been in Cairo to research Egypt’s independent unions for his doctoral thesis. His associates say that he was also interested in the ancient domination of the Egyptian economy by the state and the army. Both issues are sensitive in Egypt.
It was also discovered that he had been writing anti-government articles under a pseudonym for the left-wing Italian newspaper il Manifesto.
The newspaper’s foreign editor, Simone Pieranni, then claimed that the articles were written under an alternative name for fear of reprisals.
Pieranni said: ‘I imagine it was for security because the articles were about workers and unions.
“It is clear that when we talk about social rights and workers’ rights in Egypt, we are implicitly denouncing the lack of freedom.”
In an editorial, the newspaper adds: “He feared for his safety.”
Prosecutors said in February they had evidence showing that Maj. Magdi Sharif of Egypt’s General Intelligence arranged informants to follow Regeni and eventually arrested him at a Cairo subway station.
The Egyptian government admitted in 2016 to having placed the student under surveillance.
The charge sheet says Sharif and other unnamed Egyptian officials tortured Regeni for several days, causing him “acute physical suffering.”
An Egyptian friend of Regeni said that shortly before Regeni’s death, the student had been seeking contacts for union activists to interview as part of their investigation.
This political investigation was the main focus when police questioned his friend after the Italian student disappeared, he said.
Another friend revealed that Regeni had left his accommodation in a “middle-class area of Cairo to meet a friend downtown.”
‘The friend called him after he didn’t show up. His mobile was switched off at the time,” the friend told MailOnline in 2016, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘We spoke briefly on the day of his disappearance, about two hours before. She was happy and cheerful, she was about to meet a friend. “There are no indications of any concern.”
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but reached different conclusions.
Egypt said the murder was the work of gangsters and denied any state involvement in Regeni’s disappearance or death.
His family categorically denied the Italian press suggestion that Regeni may have worked for Italian intelligence.