On 28 September 2026, the Rome Court of Assise sentenced three members of the Egyptian security services to ten years’ imprisonment for the kidnapping of researcher Giulio Regeni, who disappeared on 25 January 2016 and was found dead in Cairo nine days later. Regeni, an Italian citizen and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, was conducting research in Egypt when his body was discovered on 3 February 2016 by the side of a highway, bearing clear signs of torture. The Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office had sought one life sentence and three 17-year prison sentences.

Although the Italian and Egyptian authorities initially declared their determination to identify those responsible, the trial initiated in Italy shortly after Regeni’s body was found did not proceed smoothly. The main reason for the delays and interruptions in the criminal proceedings was the Egyptian government’s lack of cooperation. In 2022,it refused to provide the addresses of the four defendants, prompting the Italian court to suspend the proceedings under the ordinary rules governing trials in absentia.

In this regard, the intervention of the Italian Constitutional Court proved decisive. In its Judgement No. 192/2023, the Court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Art. 420-bis, comma 3) that prevented proceedings in absentia for offences committed through acts of torture when the defendant’s absence was due to the lack of assistance from the defendant’s State of origin (see Yearbook 2023).

The criminal proceedings were able to continue following the Constitutional Court’s ruling and, ten years after Regeni’s death, culminated in the recent first-instance judgement delivered by the Rome Court of Assise. 

The Court sentenced three of the four officers of Egypt’s National Security Agency – Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif and Colonels Uhsam Helmi and Athar Kamel Moahmed Ibrahim – to ten years’ imprisonment for aggravated kidnapping. The fourth defendant, General Tariq Sabir, was acquitted. The three officers could not be charged with torture (although, as acknowledged by the Constitutional Court, what Giulio Regeni endured essentially amounted to torture), because the offence of torture was only introduced into Italian law in 2017. The Court also did not uphold the murder charge, which had been brought solely against Sharif.

In addition, the judgement provides for compensation to be paid to the Regeni family and to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, both of which joined the proceedings as civil parties. More specifically, the judge ordered the payment of an interim award of damages (provvisionale), namely a sum of money that must be paid immediately to the injured party as an advance on the final compensation.

The family and the Italian justice system have welcomed the decision as a significant achievement after a lengthy legal battle. However, the lawyers representing the three convicted defendants have already announced their intention to appeal the judgement. It also remains uncertain whether the Italian government will seek to invoke Egypt’s international responsibility – that is, the responsibility of the State on whose behalf the convicted individuals were acting and which, for years, obstructed the proceedings against them in violation of the Convention against Torture. The enforcement of the sentences, once they become final, and the payment of compensation also remain uncertain, since there is no extradition treaty between Italy and Egypt. A conviction for the offence of torture could have required Egypt to extradite the defendants (as expressly provided for by the Convention), but, as noted above, the Court was unable to apply that offence in this case.