The murder of Giulio Regeni

Regeni reassured his mother he would take care. The 28-year-old Cambridge PhD student was deeply committed to his work, but he was never reckless. This wasn’t the first time he’d lived in Egypt, and he’d been an observer of the tension and turmoil in the country that he loved. Dokki, the area where he lived, was very different from the rich, gated compounds around the American University, where he was a visiting scholar. His residential neighbourhood – leafy by Cairo standards – was popular with both foreigners and police generals, and the streets outside his third-floor flat were typically crawling with plain-clothed officers, detectable for those who lived there long enough by their dark sunglasses and sharp shoes, perhaps the glimpse of a gun. The doormen, who were regularly quizzed by the security services, kept a watchful eye on the residents. As the anniversary approached, there had been a spike in the number of apartments being raided, prompting a rush among those with incomplete paperwork to get any expired visas and other documents in order. Others cleared out of town completely.

Those who did venture out knew the likely flashpoints to avoid, but Giulio’s poorly lit street was not one of them.

In his last Skype conversation with his parents, he was as cheerful and enthusiastic as ever. There was no sign of anxiety, or the “darkening” in mood that some friends had detected in his latest messages, as he grappled with the enormity of his chosen subject for his thesis: the independent trade union movement in post-revolution Egypt.

Back in the hopeful, heady days of the Arab Spring, such organisations seemed like the heroes of the hour; five years on, they were regarded as enemies of the state.

“I didn’t look for a simple topic,” he wrote to a friend, adding a smiley face emoticon.

Giulio found this stifling of civil society “depressing”, but tried to immerse himself in local culture as best as he could, visiting arts festivals, attending screenings of documentaries about Egypt’s embattled workers.

Egyptian security forces in Tahrir Square last month

CORBIS

As darkness fell on the day of the anniversary, the full range of security services patrolled the streets and they were jumpy.

It was a last-minute decision to go to the small gathering in Giza, for the birthday of Hassanein Keshk, a sociologist and prominent critic of the regime. At 7.30pm, on January 25, Regeni messaged Amr Assad, a friend who had helped him interview ex-ministers and trade union figures, asking if he’d like to join him. Then he called another friend, a fellow researcher, to say he’d leave his third-floor flat on Yanbo Street at 8pm. They agreed to meet at a well-known fast-food outlet, downtown, not far from Tahrir Square. It was a three-minute walk from his flat to the metro stop.

Regeni never made it downtown. It’s doubtful he even made it to the metro. One witness claimed to have seen the young Italian being led away by two men. Downtown, his friend called him, repeatedly. The phone rang between 8.18pm and 8.23pm. By 8.25pm, it had been switched off.

Nine days later, Giulio Regeni was found dead by a desert road. He had been tortured. His killers had pulled out his fingernails and toenails. They cut off the top of his ears and electrocuted his genitals. Seven ribs were broken and he had suffered a brain haemorrhage, probably after being punched or kicked. His spinal cord had been severed. An Egyptian official suggested he’d been the victim of a road accident.

That was five weeks ago. The Egyptian government has denied its security services were behind his murder, but it has emerged that the senior policeman investigating the case is himself a convicted torturer. Khaled Shalaby still appears to be in his job; the anti-torture charity that revealed his dubious credentials is being shut down. Officials maintain criminals are behind the murder, and have also suggested he was killed by someone he knew. The murderer, they said, may have had “a desire for revenge for personal reasons”. Faith in a fair and full investigation is fading fast. Giulio’s parents, Paola Deffendi and Claudio Regeni, are considering legal action against the Egyptian government for linking their son with criminal behaviour and covering up the truth about his death.

Three thousand miles away, in the peace and quiet of the Friuli region in northeast Italy, Regeni’s loved ones are left trying to make sense of something senseless. He grew up in Fiumicello, a town on the low coastal plains between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea.

Outside, the church bells ring across a clear, blue sky. Old women ride bicycles, slowly, down clean, empty streets. Sunlight brightens the snow on distant mountains. It feels a long, long way from Cairo.

“We’ve lost a rare pearl,” his mother says. She and his father were proud of many things, but above all, she says, “We were proud of his modesty and the way he interacted with people, always putting them at ease.”

Indeed, ask anyone about Giulio, and they usually mention two things: his academic brilliance and the sociable nature that made friends all over the world. He was clearly an exceptional young man, whose brutal death has left anyone who met him reeling.

In 28 years, he seemed to whizz from campus to campus in the intellectual fast lane, impressing teachers from Trieste to New Mexico, USA, where he won a scholarship to study an international baccalaureate as a teenager. It was swiftly followed by a first-class degree in Arabic and politics from Leeds University; a masters degree in development studies from Cambridge; a stint at a think tank in Oxford; then back to Cambridge, where his PhD research into the sensitive topic of dissenting trade unions took him to Egypt.

Back as a boy in Fiumicello, his mother remembers him loving to dress up as a knight or Napoleon – “That’s how he began studying history,” says Deffendi, a retired primary school teacher, who volunteers to read to children at the local library. Regeni’s father is a salesman; his younger sister, Irene, an ice-skating champion. It was a happy childhood, marked early by precocious talent. “In our opinion, he was self-taught,” says his mother. “He would study beyond his homework. Even when he was playing, he showed an academic intellect.”

Ivan Bidoli used to give art lessons at Regeni’s primary school. Of all the children, only ten-year-old Giulio visited the artist in his spare time, cycling to his studio around the corner from his parents’ house every couple of weeks, to spend time with the painter, 50 years his senior. They became friends.

“He was a genius,” says Bidoli, sitting in the studio where Regeni would watch him work on his canvases. They would talk about art, culture, books. “He was like a son to me. He was exceptional. He had this immense desire to see the world, to soak up knowledge.”

Bidoli was sitting with Regeni’s mother during that final Skype call. “He was as enthusiastic as always.”

Since then, every day seems to have brought more distressing news. “The first blow was finding out he was dead. That was hard enough. But then came the information of the torture …” The old man shakes his head.

“The people who did this are not human,” says his wife, Wanda, bringing through the coffee. “They’re dogs.” She corrects herself. “No, not even animals would do that.”

Italy was the first western country to receive Sisi after he ousted his democratically elected predecessor, Mohamed Morsi. Despite Italian demands for answers from its trading partner, the fear in Fiumicello is that larger political and economic forces will allow the killers to cheat justice. “You can feel that silence falling already,” says Wanda.

Regeni’s funeral in Fiumicello, Italy

ANSA

According to Regeni’s family, his research in Cairo was in keeping with his political awakening at around the age of 14, when he was elected “young mayor” of Fiumicello (population: 5,072). The role gave him power over a budget for community projects, sparking a passion for social activism that would motivate the rest of his academic career.

“Sometimes quiet, tranquil places provoke sleep. But sometimes they permit relationships; they allow time for discussion,” says Bruno Lasca, a local councillor, as we walk around the grounds of Regeni’s secondary school.

“We have our flaws, but in small places like this you can see democracy growing from its very roots. It grows and grows.”

He points out the basketball court – one of the fruits of Regeni’s mayoralty. It stands next to the large gymnasium, where nearly 3,000 people attended his funeral. Such was the influx of mourners, there weren’t enough hotel beds in Fiumicello to accommodate them all, so the local residents opened their homes instead.

“They came from everywhere but the South Pole,” says Michela Vanni, his former drama teacher, who thinks the presence of so many interesting young people cheered the town.

“Leonardo da Vinci said that poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. At 28, Giulio surpassed us all.”

Regeni was a keen young actor. Vanni says she keeps thinking back to their school production of The Little Prince. Unbeknown to her, he wanted to play the title role of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s story, the parable of a curious boy who travels far from home, trying to understand the strange things humans do.

“But I cast him as the aviator, who crashes and gets lost in the desert …” Tears well in her eyes. “That is my regret.”

People are angry about what she describes as a “crime of state, a political massacre”. They are also fearful he will be forgotten.

“They say silence is golden, but silence also cheats. It disguises. It masks the truth. It becomes an omertà. Our fear is that forces of realpolitik will [settle for] a more convenient truth, but we will not let that happen. We will keep shouting every day, because everyone here wants the truth. The real truth.”

At 16, Regeni left Italy. He’d won a place at the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico, part of a global network of sixth-form colleges set up in the aftermath of the Cold War. With its mission to transform students into “agents of change”, it was not unlike an academically turbo-charged combination of the United Nations and the Scouts. The young Italian soon found himself on a remote campus, with 230 students from 75 different countries, sharing a room with students from Brazil, Barbados, America and the Netherlands.

“He was intense, profound, determined – but never reckless,” recalls science teacher Mike Hatlee, 61, who was Regeni’s supervisor in the Mont Blanc dormitory. They went on visits to the famous radio astronomy observatory, the Very Large Array, and the Trinity Site, the desert missile range where Manhattan Project scientists tested the first atomic bomb.

By the time Regeni reached the think tank, Oxford Analytica, he was a seasoned networker who spoke four languages: Italian, English, Spanish and Arabic. Friends in the UK remember him as a bridge-builder – the sort of guy who, on hearing someone was going to Bolivia, would offer to hook them up with his friend in Cochabamba, who would invite a Saudi man and an Israeli woman to dinner and ensure everyone went home friends.

“He was a natural diplomat,” says Paz Zárate, a Chilean academic and lawyer, who worked with him in Oxford. She remembers being “awestruck” by how good his Spanish was at their first meeting. “He was very mature. He knew that his wisdom and knowledge were beyond his years.”

What he was not, she insists, was naive. “He was a smart guy, a serious, professional researcher who was on top of everything. He would not have taken risks.”

In the morning meetings, he would hold his own with Oxford dons and foreign policy experts as they discussed international affairs. After work, the political chat would continue over pints of real ale at the Bear Inn or the King’s Arms. “It was fun, freewheeling conversation – not stuffy,” says his friend, Laurie Blair. “It wasn’t just about dry academic research. He cared about chatting to people.”

They kept in touch while Regeni was in Cairo. “I got the impression he was upset and appalled at some of the things he was witnessing. He was upset at what his Egyptian friends and colleagues were going through, knowing he was the western tip of the iceberg. But he was still being cheerful and upbeat. He didn’t want people to worry. He said things were going well – quite stressful but good.”

Another friend, who studied with Regeni at the Centre of Development Studies at Cambridge, remembers him as one of the most popular people in the department.

“He made you feel like you were important, like your views were worth listening to. That’s why people liked him. He was a person of action, who wanted to change the world – not just talk about it.”

Conversation mostly revolved round the big topics: economic crisis in Greece, the Arab Spring. Only once did they talk of girls. It was a summer evening, on the terrace of the Granta pub, overlooking the river Cam. Regeni was reflecting on the differences between British and Italian women. When his friend got up to go back to the library, Regeni tried to persuade him to stay and enjoy the evening. But the library won; the friend left him alone, but happy, watching people punt by the weeping willows. “That was the last time I saw him.”

More than 6,000 people have signed a petition urging the UK to step up the pressure to ensure his murder is fully investigated.

“The attack on Giulio was an attack on academic freedom, on the contribution made by all UK universities,” says Zárate. “How can academics and researchers carry on working, if they are not safe?”

Sitting at his home in the Middle East, a friend – let’s call him Ahmed – smiles when I ask what Regeni meant to him. He says they met while students at Leeds University. Regeni often sought his opinion over his coursework. Ahmed took him to the local mosque.

“I asked him, why Arabic? He said he found something beautiful in it from the first time he saw the calligraphy. He appreciated its beauty. For him it was something exciting, different.”

Regeni became so good at the language, the Arab once had to ask the Italian what a certain word meant. After university, they continued to meet up in whichever city Regeni found himself. Posing for a photograph in front of Vienna’s famous ferris wheel, Regeni got a laugh from some women passing by – not only by saying, “Cheese!” in Arabic, but by saying it in a hammed-up Egyptian accent.

“They had never met an Italian, a foreigner, who could speak Arabic like that.” Neither had Ahmed. “I could imagine people in Egypt not believing him when he said he was Italian.”

Finally, last September, they managed to do what they’d always promised to do, and met up in an Arab country. Regeni had just begun his seven-month placement.

He took Ahmed to Tahrir Square, where he advised him, discreetly, not to make the Rabia, the four-fingered gesture indicating solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood.

“He told me it would be dangerous. I said, I know. That would be crazy.”

Then he warned him to be vigilant about the plain-clothes police. Back in the privacy of his friend’s apartment, Ahmed asked how life in Egypt had changed since 2013, when his UN internship came to an abrupt halt during the tumultuous overthrow of Morsi.

“He told me he didn’t feel as safe as before. He felt people treated you based on which party you support, so he could not be as open with strangers as he’d have liked. He had to be more conservative.”

In the chaos of Cairo, Regeni loved to relax by the banks of the Nile, the city’s great leveller. “He liked it there because if you have £1 or £1,000, it didn’t matter. You could buy a cup of tea and enjoy the same view as the rich people.”

But inequality troubled him. “He knew [rich people in Cairo] didn’t have any connection with the thousands who were losing their jobs, suffering problems with water and electricity. They didn’t suffer, so they didn’t care.”

The friends discussed their different hopes for marriage – how Ahmed expected his mother to help find him a wife and how Regeni “really wanted to be a professor at one of the elite universities, like Harvard or MIT. He said he wanted to meet a girl who shared his dreams, and would share his journey.”

By the time of his death, he had found someone, a Ukrainian girlfriend. He was already talking about learning Ukrainian.

Ahmed hopes to visit his friend’s grave. “If I say I love Italy, it is because of Giulio.” The thought makes him emotional. “What did Giulio mean to me? I cannot measure it.”

Back in Fiumicello, they have planted an oak sapling in the school grounds, with a shiny plaque quoting a line from The Little Prince. His grave lies under the shade of cypress trees in the town cemetery, with bouquets and notes in different languages, all dedicated to a friend.

Asked what stage the investigation is at, his mother says they simply do not know.

“We just hope [it] proceeds with the maximum attention and competence from every party, so that this case does not fall into oblivion. We want the truth – not just for Giulio but for everyone.”

Additional reporting by Bel Trew