A “veiled woman” photographed Giulio Regeni during a public meeting organized in Cairo by trade unionists and street vendors, on which the young Friulian researcher was carrying out his research. This is what emerged during the new one court hearing of the process on the kidnapping, torture and murder of Giulio Regeni, for which I am four Egyptian 007s accused, Usham Helmithe general Sabir Tariq and the colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed IbrahimAnd Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif (accused of the crime of multi-aggravated kidnapping, while Sharif alone is also charged with the crimes of complicity in aggravated personal injury and complicity in aggravated murder, ed.). There were two witnesses, the then colonel of the Carabinieri ROS Onofrio Panebianco and the researcher and friend of Giulio, Francesco De Lellis, to tell what happened on 11 December 2015, just over a month before the kidnapping of Regeni (who disappeared on 25 January 2016 and was found lifeless, with visible signs of torture, on the following 3 February, along the road between Cairo and Alexandria ).
Regeni was photographed by a woman who “appeared a little out of context due to the clothing she was wearing” and Regeni “he was upset” from that episode, Panebianco said. The colonel recalled how the meeting (in which both Regeni and De Lellis participated, ed.) had been organized by the trade union community in the face of “a government crackdown” against these trade union organizations: “In particular, the category of street vendors did not have official trade union recognition from the Egyptian government.” And again: “Participating in a conference that had the issue of trade unions as its theme was central to Giulio’s research work”. However, it was “a public meeting, nothing clandestine”, the witnesses specified. But there was that episode of the photo that troubled Regeni: “We believed it an informant for some Egyptian security apparatus“, recalls De Lellis. The person in question did not participate in the event, he did not speak, De Lellis recalled: “It seems to me that Regeni also asked to delete the photographs. But she responded by procrastinating and giggling at requests to delete those images.” And again: “Photographing a person specifically is a more targeted, direct type of control. Agents present? I’m almost sure there were, but it’s not uncommon in these cases there were also informants.”
