Egypt clears police officers of Giulio Regeni murder
Italian authorities charged four Egyptian police personnel and gave them until today to present evidence in their defense.
The office of Egypt’s prosecutor general announced today it had cleared five police personnel of any suspicion of involvement in the 2016 murder of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni in Cairo.
The announcement came just weeks after Italian prosecutors brought criminal charges against four Egyptian security personnel with ties to Egypt’s National Security Agency. Italian investigators gave the men — Maj. Gen. Tariq Ali Sabir, Col. Aser Mohamed Ibrahim, Maj. Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sherif and Captain Hesham Hemli — until Wednesday to present evidence in their defense.
Egyptian prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy’s office said it would not pursue further criminal investigation for the time being, claiming the identity of the perpetrator is unknown. His office also said it would close its investigation into the theft of Regeni’s belongings, saying the men allegedly found in possession of his items were killed in a firefight with Egyptian security forces in 2016.
Authorities in Italy have accused Cairo of failing to cooperate with its investigation into a murder that bore many of the hallmarks of Egypt’s feared domestic intelligence services. Rome’s inquiry found that Regeni’s social research involving Cairo’s trade unions led Egyptian security forces to suspect he was agitating against the government.
