A person who claims to have witnessed the arrest of Giulio Regeni has informed the Guardian how he heard and noticed the Cambridge PhD pupil inside a police station in Cairo earlier than he was discovered lifeless by a roadside.
The witness, who’s considered credible by investigators in Rome, stated the safety officers alleged to have detained the Italian behaved as in the event that they have been above the legislation. “These people who took Giulio have been completely different,” he stated. “Everyone seems to be afraid of [Egypt’s] Nationwide Safety Company.”
He additionally recounted exchanges between Egyptian safety officers, apparently suggesting they tampered with Regeni’s cell phone with a view to hinder an investigation by Italian authorities.
The testimony is amongst proof obtained by Italian prosecutors in an effort to show that 4 members of the Egyptian NSA have been accountable for his disappearance.
Regini’s physique was present in a ditch subsequent to a distant Cairo freeway in February 2016, 9 days after he disappeared whereas researching commerce unions. His physique had what have been described because the telltale marks of torture by Egyptian safety forces, and was so disfigured that his mom later stated she solely recognised him by “the tip of his nostril.”
Though nobody has stood trial, Maj Gen Tareq Saber, who was a high NSA official on the time, has been named by Italian prosecutors as one of many 4 accused of orchestrating Regeni’s abduction.
“He [Saber] continues to be in service and oversees surveillance of civil society actions,” stated a human rights defender, who can’t be named for their very own security. Saber was lately promoted inside Egypt’s inside ministry, however reassigned away from his former politically delicate place.
The activist stated Saber’s alleged involvement and in addition that of Maj Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, a domestically highly effective determine within the NSA, confirmed how Egypt’s safety equipment had intensified its crackdown on civil society since President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi got here to energy in 2013.
“The goal is now to cease, punish and lift the fee for any such exercise, and never simply to observe them or collect info,” the activist added.
Prosecutors in Rome have stated they obtained testimony from three witnesses detailing Regeni’s journey from a police station within the central Cairo neighbourhood of Dokki to a big detention facility the place he was tortured.
Authorities in Egypt have lengthy maintained unknown actors or felony gangs have been accountable for Regeni’s disappearance and homicide. Its public prosecutor has stated any accused officers, if concerned, acted independently, a declare thought of unlikely by observers of its safety equipment.
Egyptian prosecutors additionally demanded that Italy’s claims of the safety forces involvement be faraway from case paperwork. Italy ignored Egypt’s try to masks the case domestically; prosecutors in Rome issued a proper request for the 4 males to face trial.
Italian prosecutors have codenamed the witnesses Delta, Epsilon and Gamma. In accordance with the testimony to the prosecutors, Gamma claimed that Sharif mentioned Regeni’s abduction at a convention in Nairobi, telling others: “We thought he was an English spy, we took him, I went and after loading him within the automobile we needed to beat him.”
Delta alleged he noticed Regeni delivered to Dokki. “A person was introduced in round 8pm or 9pm,” he stated. “He spoke in Italian and requested to talk to a lawyer and to the consulate. Solely later, after I noticed the images on the web, I understood that it was Giulio Regeni.”
Delta’s account corresponds to his description of the encounter in a later interview with the Guardian, together with an trade between Regeni and safety officers after PhD pupil spoke in Italian. A member of the safety forces replied: “You’ll be able to communicate Arabic, you’re Arab,” indicating they’d prior information of the 28-year-old earlier than his arrest.
Safety forces who detained Regini instructed officers to “depart [him] within the fridge”, stated Delta in reference to a room in some Egyptian police stations used for mistreatment and typically torture.
The witness additionally described an trade he overheard between a number of of the safety officers.
“The 4 individuals who caught Regeni got here in, [and] a police assistant got here in together with his cell phone,” he stated. “‘You probably did what I informed you?’ one officer requested the assistant. ‘Sure sir, I went down, I shut off the phone and I got here up,’ the person replied.”
Delta claimed this dialogue confirmed officers’ efforts to modify off Regeni’s cell phone from inside a Cairo metro station, thereby apparently masking proof of its final location when later sought by Italian investigators. The witness didn’t present this proof to prosecutors in Rome. The cell phone has by no means been recovered.
Italian investigators repeatedly requested CCTV footage from the Cairo metro on the day Regeni disappeared. When Egypt finally equipped it in 2018, it contained what the Italians described as “unexplained gaps” rendering it ineffective as proof.
The account Delta offered to the Guardian included particulars of the structure of Dokki police station, names of safety officers and conversations detainees should not usually get together to.
Amnesty Worldwide additionally spoke to the supply and located his account credible. “He was very sincere about how he noticed Regeni and what occurred to him,” stated Hussein Baoumi, a researcher on Egypt with the NGO. “It didn’t sound like he essentially cared that a lot in regards to the crimes dedicated in opposition to Regeni, and he didn’t essentially see these acts as felony or dangerous.”
Italian investigators say they discovered Delta to be a reputable supply and that he denied he was a former police officer.
He additionally described how Regeni was blindfolded and pushed in a civilian automobile the 4 miles from Dokki to the Lazoghly excessive safety compound, which is named certainly one of a number of potential locations for forcibly disappeared detainees.
Epsilon, a veteran worker in Lazoghly, which comprises each the inside ministry and a big NSA-run part for detainees, informed prosecutors he noticed Regeni inside the power “bare on the higher half of his physique”, displaying indicators of torture, and talking Italian.
“He was on the headquarters of the Ministry of Inside and NSA, so it’s tough for anybody to fake they didn’t know he was there,” stated Mohamed Lotfy, the founding father of the Egyptian Fee for Rights and Freedoms, whose legal professionals act because the Regeni household’s Egyptian authorized counsel.
Lotfy pointed to the 13 further individuals of curiosity sought by Italian prosecutors who may doubtlessly reveal what occurred to Regeni within the 9 days between his detention in Lazoghly and discovery of his mutilated corpse 18 miles away close to one other NSA facility.
“Sadly Egypt was not cooperative sufficient to produce info on them,” he stated. “Would a trial reveal new proof in opposition to a number of the others?”