2016 death of a UWC-USA grad in Egypt remains unsolved
Agraduate of the United World College-USA in tiny Montezuma outside Las Vegas, N.M., has become the subject of worldwide campaign — but for tragic reasons.
Giulio Regeni, an Italian who completed the international baccalaureate school’s two-year program in 2007, was murdered in Egypt about 16 months ago. His body was found in a ditch on Feb. 2, 2016, nine days after he disappeared.
The body showed evidence of torture — broken ribs, burns and cuts. The Italian interior minister said last year that an Italian autopsy indicated Regeni, 28, suffered “inhuman, animal-like, unacceptable violence” before he died.
Regeni was a doctoral student at Cambridge University in England and was in Cairo for academic research on trade unions since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak.
The murder and the Egyptian government’s continued failure to bring anybody to justice in the case — and suggestions that the government had a role in Regeni’s death or a cover-up — has become a cause célèbre around the world, straining relations between Italy and Egypt.
The case made international headlines again last month when Regeni’s parents called on Pope Francis to seek information about the killing of their son from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi during a papal visit to Cairo.
Apparently, the pope did as requested, telling reporters on his flight back to Rome: “I have looked into this situation, also because Giulio’s parents asked me to do so. The Holy See has taken some steps.”
UWC-USA in Montezuma, founded in 1982 by industrialist and philanthropist Armand Hammer and part of a global system of schools in 17 countries, is now doing its part for the campaign that Amnesty International launched under the banner “Veritá per Giulio Regeni” — Truth for Giulio Regeni.
In his honor, UWC-USA has created The Giulio Regeni Alumni Award.
Jose-Pablo Salas Rojas, the college’s associate director of alumni relations, said the award is intended to recognize alumni who have displayed “their power to make a difference through the same kind of commitment and humanity” demonstrated by Regeni, and “whose accomplishments, affiliations and professional career honor the UCW mission.”
That mission includes bringing together students from around the world to use education as “a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.”
The first Giulio Regeni Alumni Award was given out at May’s graduation ceremony in Montezuma to alumnus Bhushan Tuladhar of Nepal, a leader in his country’s environmental movement and chief technical adviser for South Asia for U.N.-Habitat’s Urban Basic Services Branch.
Salas Rojas, from Costa Rica, is a 2006 graduate of UCW-USA, a year ahead of his friend Regeni. After his own graduation, Salas Rojas visited Regeni in Fiumicello, his hometown in northern Italy.
“He was a very lively person,” Salas Rojas told me. “He was very curious to learn about people. And he really did embody our mission … he took it on himself to carry out education as a force for change.”
Questions about Regeni’s death start with the date of his disappearance after a routine text to his girlfriend — Jan. 25, 2016, the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, which brought huge crowds to Cairo’s Tahrir Square and led to Mubarak’s downfall. Unions — the topic of Regeni’s research — had helped spur the 2011 revolution.
Critics say the el-Sissi government has cracked down on past anniversary gatherings and that police had been conducting raids to intimidate anyone planning to demonstrate in 2016. Also, Regeni had written an article about a trade union meeting in which he called the el-Sissi government “repressive,” according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
Reuters has reported that, when he disappeared, Regeni was picked up by police, then taken to a Homeland Security compound. The Egyptian government denies this, but the news service’s Cairo bureau chief had to leave the country after being threatened with prosecution.
Press accounts indicate that various murder theories floated by Egyptian officials — that Regeni was killed in a road accident, by a kidnapping gang or during a drug deal — have fallen apart, and note that his case fits in with numerous instances of people disappearing while in custody of the Egyptian authorities.
The Italian government continues to press for information, and about a month ago the office of Egypt’s prosecutor-general announced it had handed over files and records requested by a Rome prosecutor.
Salas Rojas said, “It’s a clear human rights case at many levels.”
He said naming the award after Regeni is “a very small contribution to keep the spotlight on his case.”