Italian Cambridge University graduate who was abducted and tortured to death in Egypt. Giulio Regeni studied Arabic and political science at the University of Leeds, England, where he graduated with a BA. In 2011 he began studying development studies at Girton College, Cambridge University. While still a student in Cambridge, he worked for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Cairo. In 2015, he taught as a visiting scholar at the German Development Institute in Cairo. The subject of his doctoral thesis was the history and structures of independent trade unions in Egypt.
Regeni’s mutilated and half-naked corpse was found in a ditch alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway on the outskirts of Cairo on 3 February 2016. His recovered body showed signs of extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe beating; extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault with a stick; more than two dozen bone fractures, among them seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms, and shoulder blades; multiple stab wounds on the body including the soles of the feet, possibly from an ice pick or awl-like instrument; numerous cuts over the entire body made with a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor; extensive cigarette burns; a larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard and hot object; a brain hemorrhage; and a broken cervical vertebra, which ultimately caused death.
Due to Regeni’s research activities and left-wing political leanings, the Egyptian police are strongly suspected of involvement in his murder in Europe, although Egypt’s media and government deny this, alleging secret undercover agents belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt carried out the crime in order to embarrass the Egyptian government and destabilize relations between Italy and Egypt.
On 21 April 2016 Reuters reported three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources independently claiming Regeni was in police custody at some time before his death. According to these sources he was picked up by plainclothes police officers near Gamal Abdel Nasser metro station together with another Egyptian man on the evening of 25 Jan. Both men were then taken in a white minibus with police license plates to Izbakiya police station in downtown Cairo.
On 15 August 15, 2017 journalist Declan Walsh collected in a New York Times article the statement of an anonymous Obama administration official who revealed that, in the weeks after Regeni’s death, the United States acquired “explosive proof that Egyptian security officials had abducted, tortured and killed Regeni” and that “Egypt’s leadership was fully aware of the [death] circumstances”.
Link to Wikipedia biography