The Constitutional Court unblocks the Regeni case, 7 and a half years after the assassination of the researcher and after a long period of stalemate due to Egypt's refusal to collaborate.

The trial of those allegedly responsible for the death of the young doctoral student will finally be able to begin in Rome, probably next year, even in their absence.

A decision, that of the Consulta, welcomed with "great satisfaction" by the Rome prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi - who already in 2021 had requested the indictment of four senior officials of the Egyptian National Security Agency - and above all by Giulio's parents: " We had we are right : it was repugnant to the common sense of justice that the trial for the kidnapping, torture and killing of Giulio could not be held due to the obstructionism of the al-Sisi dictatorship on whose behalf the four defendants committed these terrible crimes", say Paola and Claudio Regeni who, with their lawyer Alessandra Ballerini, thank those who supported them, "the Rome prosecutor's office and in particular Doctor Colaiocco, the media escort, and all the yellow people".

The Italian authorities had long come up against the Egyptians' barrier to their request to have the addresses of the defendants - General Tariq Sabir, Colonels Athar Kamal and Uhsam Helmi and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdel Sharif - necessary to serve the procedural documents. Now the Council has declared article 420 bis, paragraph 3, of the procedural code illegitimate in the part in which it does not provide that «the judge proceeds in absence for crimes committed through acts of torture defined by the art. 1, paragraph 1, of the New York Convention against torture, when, due to the lack of assistance from the State to which the accused belongs, it is impossible to have proof that the latter, although aware of the proceedings, was made aware of the pending trial", as stated in the press release issued by the Press Office, awaiting the filing of the sentence.

The Court has therefore established precise limits to be able to proceed with the trial in the absence of the accused: the accusations must be linked to the serious crime of torture envisaged by the New York Convention, i.e. that committed by public officials or by those who in any case act in an official capacity, and there must be an obstructive attitude on the part of the State to which the defendants belong which makes it impossible to prove that they were aware of the pending proceedings against them. However, the right of those accused who have second thoughts to request a new trial in person to re-examine the merits of the case remains unaffected.

Now the preliminary hearing judge will have to wait for the sentence to be filed, before setting a new hearing and proceeding with a new indictment, after the one ordered in 2021 and canceled by the Court of Assizes of Rome precisely by virtue of the rule on trials in the absence of the accused on which the Consulta intervened.

(Unioneonline/D)

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