In 2016, Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni vanished in Cairo, only for his tortured body to be found days later.
This episode unravels the chilling mystery surrounding his death and the complex web of political intrigue and cover-ups that followed.
As Italy and Egypt clash over justice, the lingering question remains: Will there ever be truth for Giulio Regeni?
[00:00:04] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Modern Egypt”.
[00:00:29] In case you missed them, in part one, we talked about the Egyptian Revolution, the circumstances leading up to it, what actually happened, and how, in many ways, it fell short of its lofty ideals.
[00:00:42] In part two, we talked about the New Administrative Capital, the city Egypt is trying to build in the desert, and how its critics suggest that it is about more than urban planning.
[00:00:55] And in today’s episode, part three, we are going to talk about the murder of an Italian PhD student called Giulio Regeni, a young man who lost his life in a horrific way, almost certainly at the hands of the Egyptian state.
[00:01:12] Just as a little disclaimer before we start, this episode will have some descriptions that some listeners might find unsettling, because the subject matter is pretty nasty, so please take this as a polite warning before we get started.
[00:01:28] And also, this episode will assume that you’ve listened to part one, on the Egyptian Revolution, or at least you know quite a bit about that period, as I’ll be referencing some key people from that era.
[00:01:41] So, with that out of the way, let’s get started and talk about the murder of Giulio Regeni.
[00:01:49] If you walk around the city of Trieste, in north-eastern Italy, you might be surprised at some of the banners you see hanging from the windows.
[00:02:00] One you see just off the main square reads, “Free Territory of Trieste”, with the subheader, in English, I should add, “USA AND UK COME BACK!”
[00:02:13] This is a nod to the unusual period after World War II, when the city and its surrounding area wasn’t part of Italy; it was its own, “free state”, administered by the Allied countries, a little like post-war Berlin.
[00:02:31] This poster is more of a historical curiosity, of course; there are few calling for an actual split with Italy and the return of British and American troops, but it is an important reminder of this unusual period in the city’s history.
[00:02:49] Another poster that you see around the city is no mere historical curiosity.
[00:02:56] In big black letters against a yellow background, it reads “Verità per Giulio Regeni” - “Truth for Giulio Regeni”, or you might translate it as something like “Giulio Regeni Deserves The Truth”.
[00:03:14] Next year, it will be 10 years since this man was last seen alive, and although some truth has come to light, unfortunately, justice has not been served.
[00:03:29] So, what is known about Giulio Regeni?
[00:03:32] He was born in Trieste, in Italy, in 1988.
[00:03:37] He studied abroad, in Leeds and Cambridge in the UK, and in Vienna, in Austria, and became particularly interested in the burgeoning political movements in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.
[00:03:53] As part of his PhD at Cambridge, he travelled to Egypt to research trade unions, which he thought could be a fundamental part of new democratic movements in the country.
[00:04:07] Trade unions were highly regulated under Mubarak, but when his regime fell, there was a growing feeling that workers' rights now had the chance to improve, and with this, there was a growth in the number and strength of trade unions.
[00:04:25] But, as you’ll remember from part one, just three years after Mubarak resigned, in 2014, Egypt got another military dictator in the form of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or Sisi for short.
[00:04:42] The police state was back, and Sisi and his secret police kept a close eye on Egypt’s growing trade unions.
[00:04:53] This was the environment in which Regeni found himself when he moved to Cairo in September of 2015.
[00:05:01] It wasn’t his first time in Egypt, mind you.
[00:05:04] He had spent time there as an intern for the United Nations back in 2013, during the military coup against Morsi, so he was no stranger to Egyptian life.
[00:05:16] Regeni initially focussed his research on trade unions for street vendors.
[00:05:23] Like in much of the Middle East, there is a huge informal economy in Egypt, and there are an estimated 5 to 6 million street vendors in the country.
[00:05:35] These street vendors, who would lug their wares to and fro every morning and try to make enough money by the end of the day to support their family, well, they were clearly in a precarious position.
[00:05:48] You’ll remember Mohamed Bouazizi from part one, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in December of 2010 after being habitually abused and extorted by the police.
[00:06:02] As individuals, these street vendors were powerless against Egypt’s police state, but as a group, as a trade union, well, they were in a somewhat stronger bargaining position.
[00:06:17] This was the focus of Regeni’s research. And this wasn’t desk-based research, him sitting at home on a laptop or leafing through books in the library.
[00:06:28] He was out in the streets, going to trade union meetings, getting to know the people involved. It was proper, in-person field research.
[00:06:40] Most of the people he dealt with were, reportedly, very friendly.
[00:06:45] Egyptians have a reputation in the Arab world for being friendly and welcoming, and for the most part, this seems to have been Regeni’s experience.
[00:06:55] He had got into a few sticky situations, where people had pressured him for money, but it was nothing he hadn’t bargained for.
[00:07:05] The research was going well, and after five months in Cairo, he was coming to the end of his time there.
[00:07:12] In fact, he had already booked a plane ticket back.
[00:07:17] And then, at 7.41 pm on the 25th of January–the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising–he sent a text to his long-distance girlfriend, telling her he was going out to meet some friends.
[00:07:34] His friends waited for him. And waited. And waited.
[00:07:40] He never arrived.
[00:07:42] His friends grew worried and started calling around, but no one had seen him. His family back in Italy got involved, and soon the Italian embassy in Cairo was pressing Egyptian authorities for answers.
[00:07:57] Had he been kidnapped by Islamic radicals, and he would appear on a grainy video being beheaded in the desert?
[00:08:05] Had he been robbed and thrown into the Nile?
[00:08:09] For eight long days, there was nothing—just silence.
[00:08:15] Then, on February the 3rd, a bus driver on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway–about 130km away from where Regeni was last seen–slammed on the brakes.
[00:08:29] He got out of the truck, and in a ditch by the side of the road, he found Giulio Regeni’s dead body.
[00:08:38] He was naked from the waist down, and his body showed signs of having been horrifically beaten.
[00:08:45] His body bore the marks of unimaginable cruelty: cigarette burns, broken bones, cuts all over his skin, and his teeth smashed in.
[00:08:56] This was all before the blow that’s believed to have killed him: a blow to the back of his neck, fracturing his spine, and putting him out of his misery.
[00:09:07] His body was so battered that his mother could barely recognise him; she was only able to determine it was him by the tip of his nose.
[00:09:17] This wasn’t a random act of violence; it had all the hallmarks of something deliberate, something professional.
[00:09:27] The discovery was just the beginning of a mystery that only deepened.
[00:09:32] So, what happened between that text on the evening of January 25 and the moment his body was found on February 3rd?
[00:09:42] What happened in those eight days?
[00:09:46] The Egyptian authorities had some answers, none of them particularly convincing.
[00:09:52] They first claimed he had died in a traffic accident. Hit by a car, they said.
[00:09:58] That story fell apart fast when the autopsy showed torture, not tyre marks.
[00:10:05] Then they suggested it was a robbery gone wrong or maybe a personal dispute.
[00:10:11] Perhaps Regeni was gay, they said, and this was a crime of passion.
[00:10:16] He had met up with a man for sex, perhaps even a man who was hiding his homosexuality, and out of shame, he had murdered Regeni.
[00:10:26] That’s why he wasn’t wearing any trousers, that’s why he was naked from the waist down.
[00:10:32] This was ridiculous, Regeni’s friends and family protested.
[00:10:36] He wasn’t gay, he had a girlfriend, and what’s more, this level of barbarity didn’t match any kind of “crime of passion”.
[00:10:46] Then, the Egyptian authorities suggested yet more possibilities.
[00:10:52] Perhaps he was a drug addict, and this was a drug deal gone wrong?
[00:10:57] Few believed them.
[00:10:59] A few weeks later the authorities even floated the idea that he’d been killed by a gang of criminals who targeted foreigners.
[00:11:09] He had been abducted, they said, tortured for his material possessions, and when they found out that he was a mere PhD student, they killed him and dumped his body.
[00:11:21] The Egyptians even had the names and details of the gang, but, and here is where it gets particularly fishy, unfortunately, they had all been killed in a police shootout a few weeks beforehand.
[00:11:35] The Egyptian authorities knew that this criminal gang was guilty because the police had raided the gang’s apartment and “ found” Regeni’s personal belongings, including his passport.
[00:11:50] Now, there is a lot about this particular theory that doesn’t stack up.
[00:11:55] Firstly, there are eyewitness accounts of the shooting of the gang members that suggest there was no shootout; the police shot them, then dragged them back into their van to make it look like it was a shootout. These people, whether real gang members or not, were murdered by the police.
[00:12:18] And it gets even more fishy. On the date of Regeni’s disappearance, the leader of this gang wasn’t even in Cairo, so he couldn’t have been responsible.
[00:12:31] And if this gang wasn’t responsible for Regeni’s murder, how did the police “find” his passport in their apartment?
[00:12:41] And if his mother even had trouble recognising her son’s body, how did the Egyptian authorities immediately know the dead man was Regeni?
[00:12:53] It looked like an increasingly messy cover-up, and all fingers pointed at the Egyptian state.
[00:13:02] After all, the way the young researcher was tortured matched a pattern.
[00:13:08] Human rights activists had long documented how Sisi’s regime dealt with perceived threats: activists, journalists, anyone asking too many questions.
[00:13:18] They would disappear into secret detention centres, often called “black sites,” where they’d be interrogated, tortured, and often murdered.
[00:13:30] And, unfortunately, this was what Regeni’s family and the Italian authorities immediately thought had happened to him.
[00:13:40] After all, he would almost certainly have been on the Egyptian police’s radar.
[00:13:45] He wasn’t just studying trade unions from afar; he was meeting people, asking questions about wages, working conditions, and how these vendors felt about the government.
[00:13:58] These were all things that were very dangerous in Sisi’s Egypt.
[00:14:03] And indeed, the Egyptian authorities then admitted that, yes, they were watching Regeni.
[00:14:12] It turned out that one of the leaders of a trade union that Regeni was affiliated with was a police informant.
[00:14:21] He was passing on information to the Egyptian secret police, and a few weeks prior to Regeni’s disappearance, he had told them that he thought Regeni was a spy.
[00:14:35] And Regeni had been followed and tracked by the secret police for a few weeks at a minimum. He had noticed a woman taking a photo of him at a trade union event a few weeks prior, and he sensed that he might have been being followed.
[00:14:52] The Egyptian state admitted as much but claimed that they had only tracked him for a few days before coming to the conclusion that he was not a spy; he was no-one of importance.
[00:15:05] Back in Italy, Regeni’s family and friends were heartbroken but determined to get some kind of justice, some form of truth.
[00:15:17] They teamed up with human rights lawyers and pressured the Italian government to act.
[00:15:23] In Italy, “Verità per Giulio Regeni” became a rallying cry; those yellow banners started popping up everywhere, not just in Trieste but across the country.
[00:15:36] The Italian government recalled its ambassador from Cairo in protest and demanded a proper investigation.
[00:15:45] They pressed for more evidence that might help unravel the mystery, such as CCTV footage from outside the metro station where he was last seen.
[00:15:55] Mysteriously, this evidence went missing or was refused on the grounds of data protection.
[00:16:03] As the years ticked by, a few things became clearer.
[00:16:09] In 2017, Italian prosecutors started building a case, pointing the finger at Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:16:19] They identified four Egyptian security officers as suspects, accusing them of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Regeni.
[00:16:30] Witnesses came forward, too.
[00:16:32] One said he’d overheard an Egyptian policeman bragging about grabbing “the Italian” at a metro station.
[00:16:40] Another claimed Regeni had been betrayed by someone close to his research, possibly a trade union contact pressured into informing on him.
[00:16:50] There was even video footage of this man trying to get money from Regeni, which was used against Regeni to try to put forward the idea that he was a spy and was trying to buy information.
[00:17:05] But Egypt wouldn’t cooperate. Those officers were never questioned, let alone arrested.
[00:17:14] And they weren’t just any security officers.
[00:17:17] Their names were Major General Tarek Saber and Major Sherif Magdy, who were both high-ranking members of Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:17:29] And they named two high-ranking members of the police force, too: Colonel Hesham Helmy and Colonel Acer Kamal.
[00:17:37] These were not random, rogue officers who picked up a foreigner and gave him a bit of a beating. They were high-ranking officers of the Egyptian state, and the fact that they were being so protected suggests that senior leaders in Egypt were fully aware of what was going on.
[00:17:58] And here’s where it gets murkier still.
[00:18:02] Mahmoud Sisi, the son of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the President of Egypt, was the deputy head of one of Egypt’s main secret police agencies.
[00:18:14] Now, this is not to suggest that Regeni was murdered on the direct orders of Mahmoud Sisi, or his father, the Egyptian president, but that it seems highly likely they know exactly what happened and may even have given the order to protect these men and bury the truth.
[00:18:35] Still, this didn’t stop the Italian authorities from trying to find it.
[00:18:41] Finally, in 2021, the case went to trial. An Italian court tried to prosecute those four Egyptian officers in absentia, without them appearing in court.
[00:18:54] But the case never went anywhere. Of course, the men accused denied everything and didn’t attend the trial.
[00:19:03] The Egyptian authorities said there was insufficient evidence, they refused to extradite the men, and they even refused to provide their home addresses or any way of contacting them.
[00:19:17] What’s more, the defense claimed there was no evidence that these men even knew that they were on trial.
[00:19:26] This seemed bizarre, as the case was all over the news, the Egyptian state could clearly have informed them if they wanted, and the men had denied committing the crime, but the law is the law - there was no definitive proof that the men knew they were being tried, so legally the trial could not continue.
[00:19:49] This was in 2021, and it was a bitter blow to Regeni’s family, and for justice, for truth for Giulio Regeni.
[00:19:59] But there has since been some progress.
[00:20:03] In September of 2023, Italy’s top court ruled that the men could stand trial, despite the lack of cooperation from Egyptian authorities.
[00:20:14] A trial resumed in February last year, February of 2024, but it too has not gone anywhere.
[00:20:23] The defense for the men claimed there is still no evidence that the men know they are on trial, their addresses or whereabouts are still unknown, and the court didn’t even know if the men were still alive.
[00:20:37] According to the lawyer assigned to defend them, “They are absolutely untraceable”, and even if they were convicted, they would “certainly not serve their sentences”.
[00:20:50] The probability of true justice ever coming for Giulio Regeni is, unfortunately, minimal.
[00:20:59] And despite the banners that hang from windows in Trieste, and all over Italy for that matter, normal diplomatic relations between Italy and Egypt have resumed.
[00:21:12] Egypt has become the biggest buyer of Italian weapons, with a billion Euros of weapons being sold by Italian companies to the Egyptian state.
[00:21:24] Just a few kilometres to the west of Trieste, and in fact very close to the village where Regeni grew up, is a small town called Monfalcone, which is the home of the shipbuilding company, Fincantieri.
[00:21:40] If you go to the Fincantieri website, you can find press releases proudly boasting of multimillion-dollar contracts providing ships to the Egyptian navy, selling weapons to the military that almost certainly murdered a young man who grew up just a few kilometres away.
[00:22:00] It is a cruel irony, but so long as the banners remain, and his name is not forgotten, there is still a slither of possibility for justice for Giulio Regeni.
[00:22:15] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the state-sponsored murder of Giulio Regeni, and with it comes the end of this three-part mini-series on modern Egypt.
[00:22:26] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:22:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:33] Did you know about the case of Giulio Regeni before this? Do you think justice will ever be served? And what ideas do you have for more mini-series?
[00:22:42] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:45] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:22:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Modern Egypt”.
[00:00:29] In case you missed them, in part one, we talked about the Egyptian Revolution, the circumstances leading up to it, what actually happened, and how, in many ways, it fell short of its lofty ideals.
[00:00:42] In part two, we talked about the New Administrative Capital, the city Egypt is trying to build in the desert, and how its critics suggest that it is about more than urban planning.
[00:00:55] And in today’s episode, part three, we are going to talk about the murder of an Italian PhD student called Giulio Regeni, a young man who lost his life in a horrific way, almost certainly at the hands of the Egyptian state.
[00:01:12] Just as a little disclaimer before we start, this episode will have some descriptions that some listeners might find unsettling, because the subject matter is pretty nasty, so please take this as a polite warning before we get started.
[00:01:28] And also, this episode will assume that you’ve listened to part one, on the Egyptian Revolution, or at least you know quite a bit about that period, as I’ll be referencing some key people from that era.
[00:01:41] So, with that out of the way, let’s get started and talk about the murder of Giulio Regeni.
[00:01:49] If you walk around the city of Trieste, in north-eastern Italy, you might be surprised at some of the banners you see hanging from the windows.
[00:02:00] One you see just off the main square reads, “Free Territory of Trieste”, with the subheader, in English, I should add, “USA AND UK COME BACK!”
[00:02:13] This is a nod to the unusual period after World War II, when the city and its surrounding area wasn’t part of Italy; it was its own, “free state”, administered by the Allied countries, a little like post-war Berlin.
[00:02:31] This poster is more of a historical curiosity, of course; there are few calling for an actual split with Italy and the return of British and American troops, but it is an important reminder of this unusual period in the city’s history.
[00:02:49] Another poster that you see around the city is no mere historical curiosity.
[00:02:56] In big black letters against a yellow background, it reads “Verità per Giulio Regeni” - “Truth for Giulio Regeni”, or you might translate it as something like “Giulio Regeni Deserves The Truth”.
[00:03:14] Next year, it will be 10 years since this man was last seen alive, and although some truth has come to light, unfortunately, justice has not been served.
[00:03:29] So, what is known about Giulio Regeni?
[00:03:32] He was born in Trieste, in Italy, in 1988.
[00:03:37] He studied abroad, in Leeds and Cambridge in the UK, and in Vienna, in Austria, and became particularly interested in the burgeoning political movements in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.
[00:03:53] As part of his PhD at Cambridge, he travelled to Egypt to research trade unions, which he thought could be a fundamental part of new democratic movements in the country.
[00:04:07] Trade unions were highly regulated under Mubarak, but when his regime fell, there was a growing feeling that workers' rights now had the chance to improve, and with this, there was a growth in the number and strength of trade unions.
[00:04:25] But, as you’ll remember from part one, just three years after Mubarak resigned, in 2014, Egypt got another military dictator in the form of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or Sisi for short.
[00:04:42] The police state was back, and Sisi and his secret police kept a close eye on Egypt’s growing trade unions.
[00:04:53] This was the environment in which Regeni found himself when he moved to Cairo in September of 2015.
[00:05:01] It wasn’t his first time in Egypt, mind you.
[00:05:04] He had spent time there as an intern for the United Nations back in 2013, during the military coup against Morsi, so he was no stranger to Egyptian life.
[00:05:16] Regeni initially focussed his research on trade unions for street vendors.
[00:05:23] Like in much of the Middle East, there is a huge informal economy in Egypt, and there are an estimated 5 to 6 million street vendors in the country.
[00:05:35] These street vendors, who would lug their wares to and fro every morning and try to make enough money by the end of the day to support their family, well, they were clearly in a precarious position.
[00:05:48] You’ll remember Mohamed Bouazizi from part one, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in December of 2010 after being habitually abused and extorted by the police.
[00:06:02] As individuals, these street vendors were powerless against Egypt’s police state, but as a group, as a trade union, well, they were in a somewhat stronger bargaining position.
[00:06:17] This was the focus of Regeni’s research. And this wasn’t desk-based research, him sitting at home on a laptop or leafing through books in the library.
[00:06:28] He was out in the streets, going to trade union meetings, getting to know the people involved. It was proper, in-person field research.
[00:06:40] Most of the people he dealt with were, reportedly, very friendly.
[00:06:45] Egyptians have a reputation in the Arab world for being friendly and welcoming, and for the most part, this seems to have been Regeni’s experience.
[00:06:55] He had got into a few sticky situations, where people had pressured him for money, but it was nothing he hadn’t bargained for.
[00:07:05] The research was going well, and after five months in Cairo, he was coming to the end of his time there.
[00:07:12] In fact, he had already booked a plane ticket back.
[00:07:17] And then, at 7.41 pm on the 25th of January–the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising–he sent a text to his long-distance girlfriend, telling her he was going out to meet some friends.
[00:07:34] His friends waited for him. And waited. And waited.
[00:07:40] He never arrived.
[00:07:42] His friends grew worried and started calling around, but no one had seen him. His family back in Italy got involved, and soon the Italian embassy in Cairo was pressing Egyptian authorities for answers.
[00:07:57] Had he been kidnapped by Islamic radicals, and he would appear on a grainy video being beheaded in the desert?
[00:08:05] Had he been robbed and thrown into the Nile?
[00:08:09] For eight long days, there was nothing—just silence.
[00:08:15] Then, on February the 3rd, a bus driver on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway–about 130km away from where Regeni was last seen–slammed on the brakes.
[00:08:29] He got out of the truck, and in a ditch by the side of the road, he found Giulio Regeni’s dead body.
[00:08:38] He was naked from the waist down, and his body showed signs of having been horrifically beaten.
[00:08:45] His body bore the marks of unimaginable cruelty: cigarette burns, broken bones, cuts all over his skin, and his teeth smashed in.
[00:08:56] This was all before the blow that’s believed to have killed him: a blow to the back of his neck, fracturing his spine, and putting him out of his misery.
[00:09:07] His body was so battered that his mother could barely recognise him; she was only able to determine it was him by the tip of his nose.
[00:09:17] This wasn’t a random act of violence; it had all the hallmarks of something deliberate, something professional.
[00:09:27] The discovery was just the beginning of a mystery that only deepened.
[00:09:32] So, what happened between that text on the evening of January 25 and the moment his body was found on February 3rd?
[00:09:42] What happened in those eight days?
[00:09:46] The Egyptian authorities had some answers, none of them particularly convincing.
[00:09:52] They first claimed he had died in a traffic accident. Hit by a car, they said.
[00:09:58] That story fell apart fast when the autopsy showed torture, not tyre marks.
[00:10:05] Then they suggested it was a robbery gone wrong or maybe a personal dispute.
[00:10:11] Perhaps Regeni was gay, they said, and this was a crime of passion.
[00:10:16] He had met up with a man for sex, perhaps even a man who was hiding his homosexuality, and out of shame, he had murdered Regeni.
[00:10:26] That’s why he wasn’t wearing any trousers, that’s why he was naked from the waist down.
[00:10:32] This was ridiculous, Regeni’s friends and family protested.
[00:10:36] He wasn’t gay, he had a girlfriend, and what’s more, this level of barbarity didn’t match any kind of “crime of passion”.
[00:10:46] Then, the Egyptian authorities suggested yet more possibilities.
[00:10:52] Perhaps he was a drug addict, and this was a drug deal gone wrong?
[00:10:57] Few believed them.
[00:10:59] A few weeks later the authorities even floated the idea that he’d been killed by a gang of criminals who targeted foreigners.
[00:11:09] He had been abducted, they said, tortured for his material possessions, and when they found out that he was a mere PhD student, they killed him and dumped his body.
[00:11:21] The Egyptians even had the names and details of the gang, but, and here is where it gets particularly fishy, unfortunately, they had all been killed in a police shootout a few weeks beforehand.
[00:11:35] The Egyptian authorities knew that this criminal gang was guilty because the police had raided the gang’s apartment and “ found” Regeni’s personal belongings, including his passport.
[00:11:50] Now, there is a lot about this particular theory that doesn’t stack up.
[00:11:55] Firstly, there are eyewitness accounts of the shooting of the gang members that suggest there was no shootout; the police shot them, then dragged them back into their van to make it look like it was a shootout. These people, whether real gang members or not, were murdered by the police.
[00:12:18] And it gets even more fishy. On the date of Regeni’s disappearance, the leader of this gang wasn’t even in Cairo, so he couldn’t have been responsible.
[00:12:31] And if this gang wasn’t responsible for Regeni’s murder, how did the police “find” his passport in their apartment?
[00:12:41] And if his mother even had trouble recognising her son’s body, how did the Egyptian authorities immediately know the dead man was Regeni?
[00:12:53] It looked like an increasingly messy cover-up, and all fingers pointed at the Egyptian state.
[00:13:02] After all, the way the young researcher was tortured matched a pattern.
[00:13:08] Human rights activists had long documented how Sisi’s regime dealt with perceived threats: activists, journalists, anyone asking too many questions.
[00:13:18] They would disappear into secret detention centres, often called “black sites,” where they’d be interrogated, tortured, and often murdered.
[00:13:30] And, unfortunately, this was what Regeni’s family and the Italian authorities immediately thought had happened to him.
[00:13:40] After all, he would almost certainly have been on the Egyptian police’s radar.
[00:13:45] He wasn’t just studying trade unions from afar; he was meeting people, asking questions about wages, working conditions, and how these vendors felt about the government.
[00:13:58] These were all things that were very dangerous in Sisi’s Egypt.
[00:14:03] And indeed, the Egyptian authorities then admitted that, yes, they were watching Regeni.
[00:14:12] It turned out that one of the leaders of a trade union that Regeni was affiliated with was a police informant.
[00:14:21] He was passing on information to the Egyptian secret police, and a few weeks prior to Regeni’s disappearance, he had told them that he thought Regeni was a spy.
[00:14:35] And Regeni had been followed and tracked by the secret police for a few weeks at a minimum. He had noticed a woman taking a photo of him at a trade union event a few weeks prior, and he sensed that he might have been being followed.
[00:14:52] The Egyptian state admitted as much but claimed that they had only tracked him for a few days before coming to the conclusion that he was not a spy; he was no-one of importance.
[00:15:05] Back in Italy, Regeni’s family and friends were heartbroken but determined to get some kind of justice, some form of truth.
[00:15:17] They teamed up with human rights lawyers and pressured the Italian government to act.
[00:15:23] In Italy, “Verità per Giulio Regeni” became a rallying cry; those yellow banners started popping up everywhere, not just in Trieste but across the country.
[00:15:36] The Italian government recalled its ambassador from Cairo in protest and demanded a proper investigation.
[00:15:45] They pressed for more evidence that might help unravel the mystery, such as CCTV footage from outside the metro station where he was last seen.
[00:15:55] Mysteriously, this evidence went missing or was refused on the grounds of data protection.
[00:16:03] As the years ticked by, a few things became clearer.
[00:16:09] In 2017, Italian prosecutors started building a case, pointing the finger at Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:16:19] They identified four Egyptian security officers as suspects, accusing them of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Regeni.
[00:16:30] Witnesses came forward, too.
[00:16:32] One said he’d overheard an Egyptian policeman bragging about grabbing “the Italian” at a metro station.
[00:16:40] Another claimed Regeni had been betrayed by someone close to his research, possibly a trade union contact pressured into informing on him.
[00:16:50] There was even video footage of this man trying to get money from Regeni, which was used against Regeni to try to put forward the idea that he was a spy and was trying to buy information.
[00:17:05] But Egypt wouldn’t cooperate. Those officers were never questioned, let alone arrested.
[00:17:14] And they weren’t just any security officers.
[00:17:17] Their names were Major General Tarek Saber and Major Sherif Magdy, who were both high-ranking members of Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:17:29] And they named two high-ranking members of the police force, too: Colonel Hesham Helmy and Colonel Acer Kamal.
[00:17:37] These were not random, rogue officers who picked up a foreigner and gave him a bit of a beating. They were high-ranking officers of the Egyptian state, and the fact that they were being so protected suggests that senior leaders in Egypt were fully aware of what was going on.
[00:17:58] And here’s where it gets murkier still.
[00:18:02] Mahmoud Sisi, the son of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the President of Egypt, was the deputy head of one of Egypt’s main secret police agencies.
[00:18:14] Now, this is not to suggest that Regeni was murdered on the direct orders of Mahmoud Sisi, or his father, the Egyptian president, but that it seems highly likely they know exactly what happened and may even have given the order to protect these men and bury the truth.
[00:18:35] Still, this didn’t stop the Italian authorities from trying to find it.
[00:18:41] Finally, in 2021, the case went to trial. An Italian court tried to prosecute those four Egyptian officers in absentia, without them appearing in court.
[00:18:54] But the case never went anywhere. Of course, the men accused denied everything and didn’t attend the trial.
[00:19:03] The Egyptian authorities said there was insufficient evidence, they refused to extradite the men, and they even refused to provide their home addresses or any way of contacting them.
[00:19:17] What’s more, the defense claimed there was no evidence that these men even knew that they were on trial.
[00:19:26] This seemed bizarre, as the case was all over the news, the Egyptian state could clearly have informed them if they wanted, and the men had denied committing the crime, but the law is the law - there was no definitive proof that the men knew they were being tried, so legally the trial could not continue.
[00:19:49] This was in 2021, and it was a bitter blow to Regeni’s family, and for justice, for truth for Giulio Regeni.
[00:19:59] But there has since been some progress.
[00:20:03] In September of 2023, Italy’s top court ruled that the men could stand trial, despite the lack of cooperation from Egyptian authorities.
[00:20:14] A trial resumed in February last year, February of 2024, but it too has not gone anywhere.
[00:20:23] The defense for the men claimed there is still no evidence that the men know they are on trial, their addresses or whereabouts are still unknown, and the court didn’t even know if the men were still alive.
[00:20:37] According to the lawyer assigned to defend them, “They are absolutely untraceable”, and even if they were convicted, they would “certainly not serve their sentences”.
[00:20:50] The probability of true justice ever coming for Giulio Regeni is, unfortunately, minimal.
[00:20:59] And despite the banners that hang from windows in Trieste, and all over Italy for that matter, normal diplomatic relations between Italy and Egypt have resumed.
[00:21:12] Egypt has become the biggest buyer of Italian weapons, with a billion Euros of weapons being sold by Italian companies to the Egyptian state.
[00:21:24] Just a few kilometres to the west of Trieste, and in fact very close to the village where Regeni grew up, is a small town called Monfalcone, which is the home of the shipbuilding company, Fincantieri.
[00:21:40] If you go to the Fincantieri website, you can find press releases proudly boasting of multimillion-dollar contracts providing ships to the Egyptian navy, selling weapons to the military that almost certainly murdered a young man who grew up just a few kilometres away.
[00:22:00] It is a cruel irony, but so long as the banners remain, and his name is not forgotten, there is still a slither of possibility for justice for Giulio Regeni.
[00:22:15] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the state-sponsored murder of Giulio Regeni, and with it comes the end of this three-part mini-series on modern Egypt.
[00:22:26] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:22:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:33] Did you know about the case of Giulio Regeni before this? Do you think justice will ever be served? And what ideas do you have for more mini-series?
[00:22:42] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:45] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:22:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Modern Egypt”.
[00:00:29] In case you missed them, in part one, we talked about the Egyptian Revolution, the circumstances leading up to it, what actually happened, and how, in many ways, it fell short of its lofty ideals.
[00:00:42] In part two, we talked about the New Administrative Capital, the city Egypt is trying to build in the desert, and how its critics suggest that it is about more than urban planning.
[00:00:55] And in today’s episode, part three, we are going to talk about the murder of an Italian PhD student called Giulio Regeni, a young man who lost his life in a horrific way, almost certainly at the hands of the Egyptian state.
[00:01:12] Just as a little disclaimer before we start, this episode will have some descriptions that some listeners might find unsettling, because the subject matter is pretty nasty, so please take this as a polite warning before we get started.
[00:01:28] And also, this episode will assume that you’ve listened to part one, on the Egyptian Revolution, or at least you know quite a bit about that period, as I’ll be referencing some key people from that era.
[00:01:41] So, with that out of the way, let’s get started and talk about the murder of Giulio Regeni.
[00:01:49] If you walk around the city of Trieste, in north-eastern Italy, you might be surprised at some of the banners you see hanging from the windows.
[00:02:00] One you see just off the main square reads, “Free Territory of Trieste”, with the subheader, in English, I should add, “USA AND UK COME BACK!”
[00:02:13] This is a nod to the unusual period after World War II, when the city and its surrounding area wasn’t part of Italy; it was its own, “free state”, administered by the Allied countries, a little like post-war Berlin.
[00:02:31] This poster is more of a historical curiosity, of course; there are few calling for an actual split with Italy and the return of British and American troops, but it is an important reminder of this unusual period in the city’s history.
[00:02:49] Another poster that you see around the city is no mere historical curiosity.
[00:02:56] In big black letters against a yellow background, it reads “Verità per Giulio Regeni” - “Truth for Giulio Regeni”, or you might translate it as something like “Giulio Regeni Deserves The Truth”.
[00:03:14] Next year, it will be 10 years since this man was last seen alive, and although some truth has come to light, unfortunately, justice has not been served.
[00:03:29] So, what is known about Giulio Regeni?
[00:03:32] He was born in Trieste, in Italy, in 1988.
[00:03:37] He studied abroad, in Leeds and Cambridge in the UK, and in Vienna, in Austria, and became particularly interested in the burgeoning political movements in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.
[00:03:53] As part of his PhD at Cambridge, he travelled to Egypt to research trade unions, which he thought could be a fundamental part of new democratic movements in the country.
[00:04:07] Trade unions were highly regulated under Mubarak, but when his regime fell, there was a growing feeling that workers' rights now had the chance to improve, and with this, there was a growth in the number and strength of trade unions.
[00:04:25] But, as you’ll remember from part one, just three years after Mubarak resigned, in 2014, Egypt got another military dictator in the form of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or Sisi for short.
[00:04:42] The police state was back, and Sisi and his secret police kept a close eye on Egypt’s growing trade unions.
[00:04:53] This was the environment in which Regeni found himself when he moved to Cairo in September of 2015.
[00:05:01] It wasn’t his first time in Egypt, mind you.
[00:05:04] He had spent time there as an intern for the United Nations back in 2013, during the military coup against Morsi, so he was no stranger to Egyptian life.
[00:05:16] Regeni initially focussed his research on trade unions for street vendors.
[00:05:23] Like in much of the Middle East, there is a huge informal economy in Egypt, and there are an estimated 5 to 6 million street vendors in the country.
[00:05:35] These street vendors, who would lug their wares to and fro every morning and try to make enough money by the end of the day to support their family, well, they were clearly in a precarious position.
[00:05:48] You’ll remember Mohamed Bouazizi from part one, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in December of 2010 after being habitually abused and extorted by the police.
[00:06:02] As individuals, these street vendors were powerless against Egypt’s police state, but as a group, as a trade union, well, they were in a somewhat stronger bargaining position.
[00:06:17] This was the focus of Regeni’s research. And this wasn’t desk-based research, him sitting at home on a laptop or leafing through books in the library.
[00:06:28] He was out in the streets, going to trade union meetings, getting to know the people involved. It was proper, in-person field research.
[00:06:40] Most of the people he dealt with were, reportedly, very friendly.
[00:06:45] Egyptians have a reputation in the Arab world for being friendly and welcoming, and for the most part, this seems to have been Regeni’s experience.
[00:06:55] He had got into a few sticky situations, where people had pressured him for money, but it was nothing he hadn’t bargained for.
[00:07:05] The research was going well, and after five months in Cairo, he was coming to the end of his time there.
[00:07:12] In fact, he had already booked a plane ticket back.
[00:07:17] And then, at 7.41 pm on the 25th of January–the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising–he sent a text to his long-distance girlfriend, telling her he was going out to meet some friends.
[00:07:34] His friends waited for him. And waited. And waited.
[00:07:40] He never arrived.
[00:07:42] His friends grew worried and started calling around, but no one had seen him. His family back in Italy got involved, and soon the Italian embassy in Cairo was pressing Egyptian authorities for answers.
[00:07:57] Had he been kidnapped by Islamic radicals, and he would appear on a grainy video being beheaded in the desert?
[00:08:05] Had he been robbed and thrown into the Nile?
[00:08:09] For eight long days, there was nothing—just silence.
[00:08:15] Then, on February the 3rd, a bus driver on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway–about 130km away from where Regeni was last seen–slammed on the brakes.
[00:08:29] He got out of the truck, and in a ditch by the side of the road, he found Giulio Regeni’s dead body.
[00:08:38] He was naked from the waist down, and his body showed signs of having been horrifically beaten.
[00:08:45] His body bore the marks of unimaginable cruelty: cigarette burns, broken bones, cuts all over his skin, and his teeth smashed in.
[00:08:56] This was all before the blow that’s believed to have killed him: a blow to the back of his neck, fracturing his spine, and putting him out of his misery.
[00:09:07] His body was so battered that his mother could barely recognise him; she was only able to determine it was him by the tip of his nose.
[00:09:17] This wasn’t a random act of violence; it had all the hallmarks of something deliberate, something professional.
[00:09:27] The discovery was just the beginning of a mystery that only deepened.
[00:09:32] So, what happened between that text on the evening of January 25 and the moment his body was found on February 3rd?
[00:09:42] What happened in those eight days?
[00:09:46] The Egyptian authorities had some answers, none of them particularly convincing.
[00:09:52] They first claimed he had died in a traffic accident. Hit by a car, they said.
[00:09:58] That story fell apart fast when the autopsy showed torture, not tyre marks.
[00:10:05] Then they suggested it was a robbery gone wrong or maybe a personal dispute.
[00:10:11] Perhaps Regeni was gay, they said, and this was a crime of passion.
[00:10:16] He had met up with a man for sex, perhaps even a man who was hiding his homosexuality, and out of shame, he had murdered Regeni.
[00:10:26] That’s why he wasn’t wearing any trousers, that’s why he was naked from the waist down.
[00:10:32] This was ridiculous, Regeni’s friends and family protested.
[00:10:36] He wasn’t gay, he had a girlfriend, and what’s more, this level of barbarity didn’t match any kind of “crime of passion”.
[00:10:46] Then, the Egyptian authorities suggested yet more possibilities.
[00:10:52] Perhaps he was a drug addict, and this was a drug deal gone wrong?
[00:10:57] Few believed them.
[00:10:59] A few weeks later the authorities even floated the idea that he’d been killed by a gang of criminals who targeted foreigners.
[00:11:09] He had been abducted, they said, tortured for his material possessions, and when they found out that he was a mere PhD student, they killed him and dumped his body.
[00:11:21] The Egyptians even had the names and details of the gang, but, and here is where it gets particularly fishy, unfortunately, they had all been killed in a police shootout a few weeks beforehand.
[00:11:35] The Egyptian authorities knew that this criminal gang was guilty because the police had raided the gang’s apartment and “ found” Regeni’s personal belongings, including his passport.
[00:11:50] Now, there is a lot about this particular theory that doesn’t stack up.
[00:11:55] Firstly, there are eyewitness accounts of the shooting of the gang members that suggest there was no shootout; the police shot them, then dragged them back into their van to make it look like it was a shootout. These people, whether real gang members or not, were murdered by the police.
[00:12:18] And it gets even more fishy. On the date of Regeni’s disappearance, the leader of this gang wasn’t even in Cairo, so he couldn’t have been responsible.
[00:12:31] And if this gang wasn’t responsible for Regeni’s murder, how did the police “find” his passport in their apartment?
[00:12:41] And if his mother even had trouble recognising her son’s body, how did the Egyptian authorities immediately know the dead man was Regeni?
[00:12:53] It looked like an increasingly messy cover-up, and all fingers pointed at the Egyptian state.
[00:13:02] After all, the way the young researcher was tortured matched a pattern.
[00:13:08] Human rights activists had long documented how Sisi’s regime dealt with perceived threats: activists, journalists, anyone asking too many questions.
[00:13:18] They would disappear into secret detention centres, often called “black sites,” where they’d be interrogated, tortured, and often murdered.
[00:13:30] And, unfortunately, this was what Regeni’s family and the Italian authorities immediately thought had happened to him.
[00:13:40] After all, he would almost certainly have been on the Egyptian police’s radar.
[00:13:45] He wasn’t just studying trade unions from afar; he was meeting people, asking questions about wages, working conditions, and how these vendors felt about the government.
[00:13:58] These were all things that were very dangerous in Sisi’s Egypt.
[00:14:03] And indeed, the Egyptian authorities then admitted that, yes, they were watching Regeni.
[00:14:12] It turned out that one of the leaders of a trade union that Regeni was affiliated with was a police informant.
[00:14:21] He was passing on information to the Egyptian secret police, and a few weeks prior to Regeni’s disappearance, he had told them that he thought Regeni was a spy.
[00:14:35] And Regeni had been followed and tracked by the secret police for a few weeks at a minimum. He had noticed a woman taking a photo of him at a trade union event a few weeks prior, and he sensed that he might have been being followed.
[00:14:52] The Egyptian state admitted as much but claimed that they had only tracked him for a few days before coming to the conclusion that he was not a spy; he was no-one of importance.
[00:15:05] Back in Italy, Regeni’s family and friends were heartbroken but determined to get some kind of justice, some form of truth.
[00:15:17] They teamed up with human rights lawyers and pressured the Italian government to act.
[00:15:23] In Italy, “Verità per Giulio Regeni” became a rallying cry; those yellow banners started popping up everywhere, not just in Trieste but across the country.
[00:15:36] The Italian government recalled its ambassador from Cairo in protest and demanded a proper investigation.
[00:15:45] They pressed for more evidence that might help unravel the mystery, such as CCTV footage from outside the metro station where he was last seen.
[00:15:55] Mysteriously, this evidence went missing or was refused on the grounds of data protection.
[00:16:03] As the years ticked by, a few things became clearer.
[00:16:09] In 2017, Italian prosecutors started building a case, pointing the finger at Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:16:19] They identified four Egyptian security officers as suspects, accusing them of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Regeni.
[00:16:30] Witnesses came forward, too.
[00:16:32] One said he’d overheard an Egyptian policeman bragging about grabbing “the Italian” at a metro station.
[00:16:40] Another claimed Regeni had been betrayed by someone close to his research, possibly a trade union contact pressured into informing on him.
[00:16:50] There was even video footage of this man trying to get money from Regeni, which was used against Regeni to try to put forward the idea that he was a spy and was trying to buy information.
[00:17:05] But Egypt wouldn’t cooperate. Those officers were never questioned, let alone arrested.
[00:17:14] And they weren’t just any security officers.
[00:17:17] Their names were Major General Tarek Saber and Major Sherif Magdy, who were both high-ranking members of Egypt’s National Security Agency.
[00:17:29] And they named two high-ranking members of the police force, too: Colonel Hesham Helmy and Colonel Acer Kamal.
[00:17:37] These were not random, rogue officers who picked up a foreigner and gave him a bit of a beating. They were high-ranking officers of the Egyptian state, and the fact that they were being so protected suggests that senior leaders in Egypt were fully aware of what was going on.
[00:17:58] And here’s where it gets murkier still.
[00:18:02] Mahmoud Sisi, the son of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the President of Egypt, was the deputy head of one of Egypt’s main secret police agencies.
[00:18:14] Now, this is not to suggest that Regeni was murdered on the direct orders of Mahmoud Sisi, or his father, the Egyptian president, but that it seems highly likely they know exactly what happened and may even have given the order to protect these men and bury the truth.
[00:18:35] Still, this didn’t stop the Italian authorities from trying to find it.
[00:18:41] Finally, in 2021, the case went to trial. An Italian court tried to prosecute those four Egyptian officers in absentia, without them appearing in court.
[00:18:54] But the case never went anywhere. Of course, the men accused denied everything and didn’t attend the trial.
[00:19:03] The Egyptian authorities said there was insufficient evidence, they refused to extradite the men, and they even refused to provide their home addresses or any way of contacting them.
[00:19:17] What’s more, the defense claimed there was no evidence that these men even knew that they were on trial.
[00:19:26] This seemed bizarre, as the case was all over the news, the Egyptian state could clearly have informed them if they wanted, and the men had denied committing the crime, but the law is the law - there was no definitive proof that the men knew they were being tried, so legally the trial could not continue.
[00:19:49] This was in 2021, and it was a bitter blow to Regeni’s family, and for justice, for truth for Giulio Regeni.
[00:19:59] But there has since been some progress.
[00:20:03] In September of 2023, Italy’s top court ruled that the men could stand trial, despite the lack of cooperation from Egyptian authorities.
[00:20:14] A trial resumed in February last year, February of 2024, but it too has not gone anywhere.
[00:20:23] The defense for the men claimed there is still no evidence that the men know they are on trial, their addresses or whereabouts are still unknown, and the court didn’t even know if the men were still alive.
[00:20:37] According to the lawyer assigned to defend them, “They are absolutely untraceable”, and even if they were convicted, they would “certainly not serve their sentences”.
[00:20:50] The probability of true justice ever coming for Giulio Regeni is, unfortunately, minimal.
[00:20:59] And despite the banners that hang from windows in Trieste, and all over Italy for that matter, normal diplomatic relations between Italy and Egypt have resumed.
[00:21:12] Egypt has become the biggest buyer of Italian weapons, with a billion Euros of weapons being sold by Italian companies to the Egyptian state.
[00:21:24] Just a few kilometres to the west of Trieste, and in fact very close to the village where Regeni grew up, is a small town called Monfalcone, which is the home of the shipbuilding company, Fincantieri.
[00:21:40] If you go to the Fincantieri website, you can find press releases proudly boasting of multimillion-dollar contracts providing ships to the Egyptian navy, selling weapons to the military that almost certainly murdered a young man who grew up just a few kilometres away.
[00:22:00] It is a cruel irony, but so long as the banners remain, and his name is not forgotten, there is still a slither of possibility for justice for Giulio Regeni.
[00:22:15] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the state-sponsored murder of Giulio Regeni, and with it comes the end of this three-part mini-series on modern Egypt.
[00:22:26] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:22:30] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:33] Did you know about the case of Giulio Regeni before this? Do you think justice will ever be served? And what ideas do you have for more mini-series?
[00:22:42] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:45] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:53] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:22:58] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
