Activists from Amnesty International in Turin on January 25, 2020, to mark the fourth anniversary since the disappearance of Italian student Giulio Regeni
Credit: MARCO BERTORELLO /AFP
A prominent Italian intellectual gave back his Legion of Honour on Monday in protest at Emmanuel Macron conferring the same honour on Egypt’s authoritarian leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The Egyptian president was complicit in “heinous” human rights abuses and should never have been given the award, said Corrado Augias, a writer and journalist.
Italians are particularly sensitive to any legitimisation of the Egyptian regime because of the notorious case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian who was studying for a PhD at Cambridge University when he was kidnapped and murdered in Cairo.
Italian prosecutors firmly believe he was tortured and killed by the Egyptian secret services because of his research work on Egyptian trades unions.
Mr Augias went to the French embassy in Rome to hand back his Legion of Honour, saying it pained him to do so because his family was of French origin and he held France in great esteem.
“But I believe that in this case President Macron did the wrong thing. The murder of Giulio Regeni represents, for us Italians, an open wound and a national insult.”
Shortly afterwards, a second public figure followed suit. Giovanna Melandri, a former culture minister and the president of Rome’s Maxxi contemporary art museum, announced that she too would give back her Legion of Honour, citing the Regeni case.
The parents of Giulio Regeni have campaigned tirelessly to find out the truth of what happened to their son
Credit: Massimo Percossi /AP
President Macron gave his Egyptian counterpart France’s highest award on a state visit to Paris last week.
Presidential officials said conferring the honour was an unavoidable part of protocol for such a high-level visit, but the move outraged activists, who said France had failed to raise human rights issues and the plight of an estimated 60,000 political prisoners languishing in Egyptian prisons.
Regeni, 28, was studying for a PhD at Girton College and conducting research into trades unions in Egypt, a highly sensitive issue for the Egyptian authorities, when he disappeared in Cairo in January 2016.
His horrifically tortured body, covered in cigarette burns, was found dumped on the side of a dusty highway more than a week later.
Italian prosecutors have accused Regeni’s supervising tutor, Maha Abdelrahman, of failing to cooperate with their investigations.
In court documents published by the Italian press on Sunday, prosecutors suggested that Dr Abdelrahman may have endangered the Italian by putting him in touch with anti-government activists in Cairo.
Such accusations were “scurrilous and irresponsible” Cambridge said on Monday.
Allegations that Dr Abdelrahman had not cooperated with the investigation were “baseless,” said Prof Stephen J Toope, the university’s vice-chancellor.
The tutor’s role had been to support and advise Regeni, rather than instruct him who to meet and what to research, he said.
“He was an experienced researcher, with experience of field work in Egypt, working on legal independent trade unions that were also being researched by many others at the time.”
The Egyptian authorities variously claimed that the Italian died in a traffic incident or that he had been the victim of a violent kidnapping or even a gay lovers’ feud.
Italy has dismissed those suggestions as baseless and has accused the Egyptian regime of repeatedly stonewalling demands for transparency and cooperation.
Last week, Italian prosecutors charged four Egyptian security officers, including a general, with kidnapping Regeni.
One of the officials from the feared National Security Agency was also accused of taking part in the Italian’s torture and murder. Given the lack of cooperation from Cairo, they are likely to be tried in absentia, starting next year.
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