Italy's top court removes block to Giulio Regeni murder trial of Egyptian security officials

Italy's top court ruled on Wednesday that the trial of four Egyptian security officials over the disappearance and murder of an Italian student could go ahead, despite concerns the defendants did not know they had been charged.

The trial of the four men opened in 2021 but was swiftly suspended after the judge ruled in favour of court-appointed defence lawyers, who had argued that the proceedings would be void if there was no evidence the Egyptians knew about the case.

Reviewing the issue, Italy's top court said in a statement that the legal code relating to this question was unconstitutional given the lack of cooperation from the suspects' home state, opening the way for the trial to resume.

"There is obviously great satisfaction in the possibility of holding a trial according to our constitutional principles, which remain the guiding light of our work," chief Rome prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said in a statement.

Giulio Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain's Cambridge University, disappeared in Cairo in January 2016. His body was found almost a week later and a post-mortem examination showed he had been brutally tortured before his death.

Italian and Egyptian prosecutors investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.

The Italian prosecutors say Major Magdi Sharif, from Egypt's General Intelligence, Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo city, were responsible for the "aggravated kidnapping" of Regeni.

Sharif has also been accused of "conspiracy to commit aggravated murder".

The suspects have never responded publicly to the accusations and Egyptian police and officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in Regeni's disappearance and killing.

An Italian prosecutor told the court in 2021 that Italy had tried on around 30 occasions, through diplomatic and government channels, to obtain the addresses of the suspects, but had never received any answer.

Italy's legal system is notoriously slow and there was no immediate indication of when the trial might resume.

(Reuters)