Italian court convicts three Egyptian officials

An Italian court on Monday convicted three Egyptian security officials of involvement in the 2016 kidnapping of student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body was found days after his disappearance in Cairo.



The three men were sentenced to 10 years in jail, while a fourth Egyptian defendant was acquitted.



Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain's Cambridge University, vanished in the Egyptian capital on January 25, 2016.



His body was found almost a week later, with a post-mortem showing he had been extensively tortured before his death.



In a ruling read out to the court, a judge said Major Magdi Sharif, from Egypt's General Intelligence, police Colonel Hisham Helmy and Colonel Ather Kamal, a former head of investigations in Cairo were guilty of the "aggravated kidnapping" of Regeni.



The judge acquitted Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, of the same charge and also dismissed the accusation of "conspiracy to commit aggravated murder" leveled against Sharif.