The trial of four Egyptian security officials over the disappearance and murder of Giulio Regeni has been suspended by an Italian Judge because of concerns the men might not know about they had been charged.
The decision means the case will now return to a preliminary court that will have to decide whether to make a fresh effort to locate the four senior officials and hand them their writs
A prosecutor had said Italy had made numerous efforts to track down the suspects in the killing of Giulio Regeni and accused Egypt of refusing to reveal their whereabouts and of repeatedly undermining the investigation.
After more than seven hours of deliberations, Judge Antonella Capri ruled in favour of court-appointed defence lawyers who had argued that the proceedings would be void if there was no evidence the four Egyptians knew about the case.
Lawyer Alessandra Ballerini said; Regeni’s family were bitterly dismayed by the decision”It is a setback, but we are not going to give up. We demand that those who tortured and killed Giulio do not go unpunished,”
Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, disappeared in Cairo in January 2016. His body was found almost a week later and a post-mortem examination showed he had been brutally tortured before his death.
Italian and Egyptian prosecutors investigated the case together, but the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.