Giulio Regeni's death is not acceptable. Not at all so, because of the way in which it happened. Not at all so, because of the unchallenged violence practiced by the Egyptian government, and of the lies and the clumsy attempts to misguide the investigation. However, now that the Italian researcher's killing unveiled dictator Sisi's rule, it would be just too little to ask for the truth about Giulio's death ignoring the many other victims of the regime in Cairo. Even if authorities gave up Regeni's killers, which is quite unlikely at this point, it would be unfair to discontinue our efforts, and turn our backs pretending not to see what is before the eyes of the world. To seek justice for every Regeni in Egypt is likely the most civilized and humane way to pay tribute to the memory of the young Italian researcher. Respect for human rights is non-negotiable, not even in the case of a country maintaining with Italy economic and political relations of obvious strategic relevance.


This is the rationale behind the creation by L'Espresso of RegeniLeaks, a secure platform to gather complaints, documents, photos, videos and testimonials of people who were tortured or those who are aware of abuses by the al Sisi regime. A human rights violation claim was filed with the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 10 March 2016. The platform runs on Globaleaks software, and guarantees the anonymity and security of whistleblowers.

LIES AND TRUTHS 

Despite pressure from the Italian government and the international community, the truth on Regeni's death has still to come out. There are many certainties, however. Giulio was an Italian researcher at the University of Cambridge. Born in Trieste on 15 January 1988, he grew up in Fiumicello, in Udine province. He moved to Egypt carry out a research on independent trade unions at the American University in Cairo. He did not commit any crimes. Furthermore, to date there is no evidence that he did anything even vaguely condemnable in any democratic country. Yet, in al Sisi's Egypt that did not suffice.

The other certainties belong to one of the many pages the Egyptian regime wrote in blood. On 25 January 2016, on the fifth anniversary of the protests in Tahrir Square, the symbol of the Arab Spring, Giulio left home to go meet a group of people he was familiar with in Tahrir Square. Together they were going to celebrate a friend's birthday. He never got there. His body was found on 3 February 2016, dumped along the highway from Cairo to Alexandria. He had been kidnapped and tortured for several days by professionals, the autopsy performed in Italy showed.

A STATE CRIME 

After Giulio's body was found, al Sisi's police and security forces tried in every way to cover up what from the beginning appeared to be a state crime — one of the many crimes committed every day against the opponents of the regime, but also against ordinary people who happen to cross with the police and the secret service men. Authorities provided a number of official versions of what had happened, all fanciful and improbable and without a shred of evidence: car accident, passion crime, a showdown between criminal gangs, espionage, orchestrated political crime to undermine relations between Italy and Egypt. None is supported by the slightest evidence. And when the regime realized that the time had come to offer a scapegoat, it set up the most criminal type of staging.

MISGUIDING THE INVESTIGATION 

The Egyptian police announced on 24 March 2016 that they had killed five men in a shooting. The Egyptian Interior Ministry maintained the men belonged to a criminal gang that specialized in kidnapping foreign citizens for ransom and extortion. The official statement said that the five men shot dead in Cairo were responsible for the abduction and death of the Italian researcher. This time evidence was shown. The Egyptian police showed a red bag featuring the logo of the Italian Football Federation reportedly found during a search in the house of some family of one of the slain men. The bag held several objects, some of which actually belonged to Regeni: his passport, his ID cards for Cambridge University and for the American University in Cairo and his credit card. This "closed case" was in fact   another unrealistic attempt to misguide the investigation, and so much for it for Cairo. The many contradictions, supported by statements of relatives of the men killed by the police forced the office of the prosecutor in Cairo to swiftly backtrack on the gang being involved in the murder.

Instruction

Preliminary information about RegeniLeaks and first access

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16/5/2016

The case is thus far from closed. Or better put, it is unlikely that the police and the intelligence service were unaware of the blatant misguiding attempt. But even these events were dismissed without any further investigation or step to shed light on who was responsible for the staging. There is no justice in Cairo. Or rather, there is justice: just the one that suits the President.

All of these clumsy attempts to hide the truth, and protect Giulio's murderers did only reinforce the belief of the public opinion in the world that this was a state crime; and that al Sisi and his entourage clearly know who is materially responsible for Giulio's torturing and murder, and are therefore responsible alike. This was confirmed by Omar Afifi, a former colonel in the Egyptian police and a refugee in the US since 2008, in an interview with L'Espresso, in which he did not shy away from pinpointing who was responsible for what: "Mr. al Sisi's cabinet head, Abbas Kamel, had [Regeni] transferred to have him questioned by the military intelligence; General Mohamed Faraj Shehat, director of military intelligence; clearly the minister of Internal Affairs, Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, and President al Sisi were both informed from the transfer on. "It's been years now that no foreign national can be questioned without the Internal Affairs being in the loop. So says the regulation. And it has always been observed".

WHAT GIULIO'S BODY TELLS 

The other certainty about what happened between 25 January, the day of the kidnapping, and 3 February, when the body was found, came out from the post-mortem examination performed on Regeni's body later in Italy. On Giulio's body his mother saw "all the evil in the world." The autopsy performed in Rome by medical examiner Professor Vittorio Fineschi confirmed that Giulio was tortured "professionally" for five or six days. His ears were cut off. There were clear marks of burns, and bone fractures throughout the body. CAT scan and MRI scans show that no external or internal injury was fatal during all the days Giulio remained in the hands of his captors until the violent twisting of the neck that caused the fracture of a cervical vertebra, the ultimate cause of death. This too is considered to be a professional technique.

Giulio's body featured a detailed and watertight indictment that no misguidance, deceit or false reconstruction will ever cancel. The repeated attempts to cover up the case revealed also another truth: al Sisi and his most loyal entourage know exactly what happened, and tried to whitewash the facts for Italy and the whole world. The Vice President of the Cairo Representatives broke another attempt to tarnish the memory of Giulio Regeni: Soliman Wahdan made the Italian researcher out to be "a spy", explaining how "this would create a huge rift in Italy-Egypt relations" if that was proved. In fact, it was just an attempt to shift the responsibility onto Italy — many big Italian companies make business in Egypt, and the two countries share economic and strategic foreign policy interests in the larger Middle East.

WHY ELEAKS 

Giulio Regeni's death is now an international case: it pierced the veil on the al Sisi regime and on the modus operandi with which his men in the security forces treat opponents and anyone who happens to come in front of a police officer. Now the whole world saw and had evidence of how disappearances and torture in Egypt are systemic, as were General Videla's desaparecidos in Argentina between 1976 and 1981. More than 600 underage prisoners are held illegally in Egyptian prisons; between February and March 2016 more than 250 people were detained on the streets, and never came back home. The thousand Regenis with no name for whom no one speaks out depict an abyss of violence and horror that is terrifying the nation.

RegeniLeaks was launched in the hope of helping to shed light both on Giulio's violent death and on the inferno of horror and violence gripping the country. We can no longer now seek justice for the Italian researcher pretending not to see the thousand Regenis with no name for whom no one speaks out. The platform, which allows to anonymously and securely post claims, documents, videos and photos, uses an encryption system developed in collaboration with Globaleaks. Following the instructions in Arabic, English and Italian, whistleblowers will stay anonym and safe. Not even the website editors will ever know who they are if they do not want to reveal their identity. Of course, all documents and reports conveyed to the platform will undergo a check, and only those verified by the editors and supported by objective findings will be published by L'Espresso.

Speaking to the Parliament, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said: "If anyone imagined that time would lessen Italy's attention , and somehow force us to relinquish and go back to a normal relation, they should know that going back to normality in our relations will be subordinated to a serious collaboration." But can there be normality and relations with a country that tortures its own citizens?

(translation by Guiomar Parada)

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