Student Tortured to Death by ‘Mistake’

A student tortured to death after being mistaken for a spy had his bones broken and sustained slash wounds across his body, a court has heard.

A Rome court yesterday heard how Giulio Regeni, 28, a student at Cambridge University, suffered severe burns and was beaten with sticks by a group of Egyptian intelligence officers.

At post-mortem, the Italian students body was riddled with signs of extreme torture. These included cuts, bruises and more than two dozen bone fractures, including seven broken ribs, all of his fingers and toes. His legs, arms and shoulder blades were also shattered.

On the soles of his feet, there were also a number of stab wounds and burn marks. It’s thought that these were created by a razor blade and cigarette burns. Another burn mark, which was between his shoulder blades, is thought to have been seared into his skin when his tormenters branded him.

In addition to the external marks, his autopsy revealed that he’d suffered a brain haemorrhage and a broken cervical vertebra. It’s thought that this was caused by his neck being twisted or struck, which was his ultimate cause of death.

Vittorio Fineschi, the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, said that almost all of the signs of torture were carried out in Egypt.

His mother Paola Deffendi, from Fiumicello, near Udine in northeastern Italy, said her beloved was only recognisable from the “tip of his nose” after “all the evil in the world” was inflicted upon him.

Four Egyptian secret service agents are currently being tried in absentia at a court in Italy. On January 25, 2016, the PhD student was last spotted leaving his flat in Cairo to visit a friend. A little over a week later, his body was found stripped from below the waist and dumped in a highway ditch between Cairo and Alexandria.

He’d been in the city for his doctoral thesis, which was research on Egypt’s independent unions. According to colleagues and friends, he was also interested in Egypt’s state and military dominance on the economy. These topics could easily draw the attention of Egyptian authorities. He also reportedly published anti-government writings for an Italian left-wing paper called il Manifesto.

Simone Pieranni, the foreign desk editor, said that he chose to publish them using a pseudonym due to fear of reprisal attacks. He said: “I imagine it was for security because the articles were about workers and unions. It’s clear that when you speak about social rights and workers’ rights in Egypt you are implicitly denouncing the lack of freedom.”

Prosecutors say that Egypt’s General Intelligence officer, Major Magdi Sharif, sent informants to follow him and ordered his arrest at a metro station in Cairo. In 2016, the Egyptian government confirmed it had put the student under surveillance.