Four years have passed since Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni’s mangled, half-naked body was found on the outskirts of Cairo. Regeni, 28 at the time and working on a PhD at the University of Cambridge, went missing on January 25, 2016. His body was discovered on February 3.  It showed signs of extreme torture: according to a second autopsy report, Regeni’s whole body was covered in cigarette burns, stabbings and bruises.  

He had been tortured over a period of several days before he was finally killed when his neck was twisted or struck in a way that broke a vertebra, resulting in him not being able to breathe. As a result of the graphic injuries he sustained, his mother could only identify him by his nose.  

The Egyptian authorities first said that Regeni had been killed in a car accident. Seeing as this made no sense given the type on injuries he had, they quickly changed their story and said it was a crime of passion that resulted in his death, given that he was found naked from the waist down. 

When this ludicrous explanation didn’t check out, they said that Regeni had been killed by a foreigner he was “seen” having an argument with next to the Italian consulate. 

Once this invention also failed to convince anyone, the authorities finally said he had been killed by a gang who were conveniently killed in a shoot-out with police. However, witnesses described it as more of an execution rather than a shoot-out.    

Several people, including Regeni’s own family, believe he was killed by the Egyptian Security Services because of the nature of his research. His PhD focused on labour unions in Egypt that were against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

To most people who view Egypt from afar, the main opposition to secular dictatorship would be Islamists. While Islamists have been a thorn in the side of Egyptian dictators stretching back to the days of Nasser, secular socialist movements, embodied by trade unions, have always been the greatest threat to dictatorship in the land of the Nile.

Writing about Regeni’s case in the UK news-paper The Independent, veteran journalist Robert Fisk says of Egypt’s workers:

“Even under the British, Egyptian industrial workers protested their appalling conditions and poverty-line wages. Tobacco and printing workers, railway and tramway employees went on strike. The big cotton factories repeatedly closed down during the 1920s. 

Giulio Regeni’s PhD focused on labour unions in Egypt that were against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi

“It became almost a national tradition; one of Nasser’s first acts – before creating the inevitable ‘official’ union, which still exists – was to execute two leading strikers, Mustafa Khamees and Abdel Rahman al-Baqary, from the Kafr al-Dawar spinning factories. Under Mubarak, police killed striking steel workers in 1989.

“But the real source of fear for Mubarak’s regime, and one of the principal reasons he was eventually overthrown, came from the cotton workers and spinners of Mahala, a grubby town north of Cairo in the Nile Delta.

“A French colleague first pointed out to me the importance of Mahala, whose great cotton factories provided millions of dollars of exports for Egypt. The independent trade unions there staged an attempted coup against Mubarak in 2006 – seven years before the Cairo Tahrir Square revolution.” 

In May of 2019, it was reported that Regeni was killed because the Egyptians believed he was a British spy. While it is not uncommon for paranoid police states to believe foreigners are spies for overseas governments, a simple background check on Regeni would have revealed that he was an academic conducting research. 

Indeed, it is much more likely that the PhD student was killed because of his research. Italian prosecutors said as much in December 2019. They believe that Regeni was betrayed by fellow University of Cambridge students, who were Egyptian. 

It is alleged that these supposed “friends” gave the Egyptian Security Services information about the Italian’s whereabouts.    

Four years on, Giulio Regeni’s case remains unsolved. The Trieste-born Italian no doubt had a bright future ahead of him, before his young life was taken. The fight for justice for Regeni goes on. 

markmanduca28@gmail.com

Mark Manduca has a Master’s Degree in Diplomatic Studies from the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies.