Italian court convicts three Egyptian agents for kidnap of Giulio Regeni

The security officials were tried in absentia 10 years after the Italian student was found dead after being tortured.An Italian court has convicted three Egyptian security officials for their involvement in the kidnapping of student Giulio Regeni, who was later found dead.The men were sentenced to 10 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping on Monday, while a fourth defendant was acquitted. They were tried in absentia and are unlikely to face extradition given the strained relations between Italy and Egypt as a result of the case.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Ebola cases surpass 8,000 as DRC struggles to control outbreaklist 2 of 3South Korea suspects North Korean mines behind DMZ blastlist 3 of 3Paris court finds Swiftair guilty over 2014 Mali crash that killed 116end of list“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told reporters.Regeni, a postgraduate student at the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge, disappeared in the Egyptian capital in January 2016. His body was later found on the side of a road with broken teeth, cigarette burns and broken bones. A post-mortem determined he had been tortured.Human rights activists said his injuries were similar to those found on people who have been tortured in Egyptian security agency facilities.People during a 2018 march and torchlight procession in memory of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Rome, Italy [File: Andrea Ronchini/Getty Images]Egypt has denied any involvement in his death. The four men, Major Magdi Sharif, from General Intelligence; police Colonel Hisham Helmy; Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo; and former head of state security Major General Tarek Sabir, who was acquitted, have never responded to the accusations against them.