The proceeding against five members of the Egyptian secret services accused of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Giulio Regeni in Cairo was due to open this morning before the GUP of Rome, Pierluigi Balestrieri. It was rescheduled to May 25 due to Covid by one of the defendants’ defenders. Also present in the courtroom were the chief prosecutor Michele Prestipino, the prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco who in recent years has followed the investigations, and the parents of Giulio Paola Deffendi and Claudio Regeni accompanied by their lawyer, the lawyer Alessandra Ballerini. The postponement is due to the legitimate impediment of one of the defendants due to Covid. The request for trial had arrived on January 20 after the closure of the investigation, signed by the chief prosecutor Prestipino and by the substitute Colaiocco, against General Sabir Tariq, Colonels Usham Helmi, Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, and Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif for the crime of multiple kidnapping, and against the latter the prosecutors also contest the participation in aggravated personal injuries and the complicity in aggravated homicide.
But the news of the day is that the hearing was anticipated by a video posted on YouTube and Facebook from Cairo, with facts reconstructed to discredit the Italian researcher and clear the Egyptian authorities. It is an Egyptian documentary, which appears in a channel called “The story of Giulio Regeni”, which is also associated with a Facebook page. It is in three parts, lasts 50 minutes, and is presented as “the first film that reconstructs the movements of Giulio Regeni in Cairo”, in Arabic with Italian subtitles.
The video is studded with even gross errors such as the name of Regeni himself who is crippled and reports facts already known, but reconstructed with the intent to discredit the researcher and to support the Egyptian thesis that the authorities in Cairo are extraneous to torture in Giulio’s death. All this comes on the eve of the first preliminary hearing, in front of the GUP of Rome, which sees 5 defendants belonging to the Egyptian secret services. Other Italians interviewed in the Regeni docu include Leonardo Tricarico, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, former Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta and journalist Fulvio Grimaldi. “Today a documentary was published on YouTube that muddies the name of Giulio Regeni, insinuating that he was a spy for the Muslim Brotherhood. The video contains various interviews with various Italian subjects, including former generals, parliamentarians and also an interview with myself. I would like to clarify to everyone that I was contacted by Mr. Mahmoud Abd Hamid who presented himself as the representative of the Arab broadcaster Al Arabiya in Italy. He wrote that their crew was in Rome to make a documentary film on diplomatic and economic relations between Italy and Egypt “, said former minister Trenta.” If I had known that my interview would end in a documentary that I consider shameful and unacceptable, of course I would never have given my consent. I was therefore misled (moreover, my interview, which lasted about half an hour, was reduced to a few minutes) and I hope that light will be shed as soon as possible on what happened. I take this opportunity to reiterate my deepest closeness to the Regeni family “, he concludes.
THE COMMISSION AND THE GASPARRI REACTION
The president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the death of Giulio Regeni, Erasmo Palazzotto, condemns the video that appeared and defines it as an attempt to mislead: “On the eve of the preliminary hearing of the trial for the four Egyptian 007 accused of the killing of Giulio Regeni a shameful documentary appears, of unknown production, which once again tarnishes Giulio’s memory. Yet another unacceptable attempt at misdirection “. “It is very serious that Italian political and military exponents have lent themselves to this ignoble operation – adds Palazzotto -. It is serious that Gasparri has discredited not only Regeni but his own country, justifying the outrages received by our magistrates on the Egyptian side. The Commission I preside will not leave out any detail and will try to shed light on every shadow area of this affair – he continues -. But feeding the culture of suspicion, continuing to make allusions about Cambridge without any evidence, contributes to divert attention from Cairo where Regeni was killed and where his torturers and murderers are still unpunished today “.
Former Minister Gasparri talks about the interview spread within the documentary and defends himself: “I did an interview on Arab television, Al Arabiya, I have the complete recording, it’s forty minutes … In deprecating and condemning the Regeni crime I talked about the secret of Pulcinella: the professors close to the Muslim brotherhood, the Cambridge professors who, questioned by the Rome prosecutor’s office, refused to answer. We always talk about the scarce Egyptian investigative collaboration but also – recalls the senator of Fi – from England lacked clarity on these professors close to the Muslim brotherhood. It is an established historical fact that does not detract from the horror of the killing of Giulio Regeni “. He specifies that he “was in Egypt on a parliamentary mission in July 2017, with senators Latorre and Santangelo, we met the head of the Coptic church, the secretary of the Arab League, the president of the Egyptian parliament and president Al Sisi. We asked for the truth about the killers, who are certainly Egyptians, but we must not forget that someone sent this boy to us in such a dangerous context ”, concludes Gasparri.