Maha – The Final Match
ROME. It was promised to be a redde rationem, but Maha Abdel Rahman, Giulio Regeni's Cambridge tutor is now emerging from something that is much more, and far worse, laying bare her statements of "I don't remember, I don't know". Interrogated in a University office on Tuesday afternoon, in the presence of her two trusty lawyers, a substitute attorney from Rome Sergio Colaiocco, an official from the Carabinieri's ROS, an official from the SCO and Cambridgeshire police officers. For an hour and a quarter she circled around at least three key circumstances in her relationship with Giulio and his research process. She avoided providing any plausible explanation of her involvement, which had been documented in a chat and two emails recuperated from the researcher's PC.
To the point that, yesterday morning, her offices and small 50 square metre house in Cambridge were turned upside down in a long search called for by the public prosecutor's office in Rome …
To the point that, yesterday morning, her offices and small 50 square metre house in Cambridge were turned upside down in a long search called for by the public prosecutor's office in Rome …
ROME. It was promised to be a redde rationem, but Maha Abdel Rahman, Giulio Regeni's Cambridge tutor is now emerging from something that is much more, and far worse, laying bare her statements of "I don't remember, I don't know". Interrogated in a University office on Tuesday afternoon, in the presence of her two trusty lawyers, a substitute attorney from Rome Sergio Colaiocco, an official from the Carabinieri's ROS, an official from the SCO and Cambridgeshire police officers. For an hour and a quarter she circled around at least three key circumstances in her relationship with Giulio and his research process. She avoided providing any plausible explanation of her involvement, which had been documented in a chat and two emails recuperated from the researcher's PC.
To the point that, yesterday morning, her offices and small 50 square metre house in Cambridge were turned upside down in a long search called for by the public prosecutor's office in Rome and conducted by the English police. Mobile phones, pen drives, computer and external hard-drives were sequestered. All while the same university, going above and beyond that which was asked by the Italian judiciary, froze her IT channels (email traffic and files archived on the university server) so that the data could be copied and entered as forensic evidence into the inquiry by the public prosecutor's office in Rome. Abdel Rahman is, and will remain, a witness of Italian justice.
Giulio Regeni's assassins (both instigators and perpetrators) remain to be found within the mechanisms of the Egyptian regime. For Italian justice, and now for Egyptian justice (if the outcome of the last meeting in Cairo between the two prosecutors is not a false motion). Nevertheless, the search and seizure of Abdel Rahman's technological devices communicates somewhat dramatically not only the deterioration of an unprecedented situation by many aspects (it is rare that English judicial cooperation is pushed to the point of authorising the search of a witness), as well as the decision by the English Government to emerge from a two-year long aphasia, but a development in the reconstruction of the facts which led to the death of Giulio. A circumstance which emerged during the interrogation and which can be recounted like this. A move which, objectively, marked and accelerated the destiny of Giulio Regeni, intensifying the paranoia of the Egyptian security apparatus who had put him on their radar, carries the signature of the professor.
As documented in an email that Giulio sent to his mother on 14th November 2015, just over two months before he was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Al-Sisi regime forces, it was Maha who sent Giulio a link for the application process suggesting that he convinced the trade union on which he was conducting his "participatory research" to compete for the £10,000 made available by the Antipode foundation, thus allowing them to finance their own "project from below". Thus, whetting the appetite of Mohamed Abdallah, leader of the trade union of street vendors at the time, the man who betrayed Giulio and who was his primary research source. It is common knowledge that the possibility of acquiring that money would remain on paper. In fact, after speaking with Abdallah, Giulio dropped the matter. He surmised that the street vendor was thinking of using that money for personal use. Furthermore, not only were the funds not available to Giulio, but they were at risk, as Giulio discovered, of being incompatible with Egyptian law which prohibits direct or indirect financing of trade unions and associations.
During her deposition, Abdel Rahman was not only unable to explain why she made that suggestion nor why, as an Egyptian, she didn't gather all the risky facts. Facts which Giulio, on the other hand, had certainly gathered. She was also unable to explain two other situations, neutral by certain aspects. She denied the evidence - documented in a chat between Giulio and a friend on 15th July 2015 - that she had suggested the topic of the research to Giulio. She denied ever receiving the ten reports documenting the results of the first phase of Giulio's work, given to her during their meeting on 7th January 2016 in Cairo. She reaffirmed, as she has been doing for two years, that there were no objective elements of risk in Giulio's research procedure. A situation in which our investigators contrarily see negligence or an attempt to cover it in retrospect. All the more so to have decided, between Tuesday and yesterday, to have 66 Cambridge students who had carried out research in Cairo and Egypt prior to Giulio (not only for the department where the professor teaches), as many questionnaires that clarify which procedures have governed the work of the university over the years. Who decides which themes of research; what type of relationship is held with the tutor; whether there was any pressure from the university to conduct the research in Egypt; who chose the tutor on site.
Finally, there is one last detail that today allows us to demonstrate how the iron fist of Professor Abdel Rahman led with the Public Prosecutor's Office in Rome (also recently sustained by a faction of academic community who felt that their freedom of teaching had been wounded) which in reality disguises a much less edifying framework. Courteously, at the very least. Giulio gave Maha, whom he trusted, a copy of the bestseller, 'Gomorra', by Roberto Saviano. He did this after giving it much thought. As a gesture of respect. On Tuesday afternoon, the DA Sergio Colaiocco, in an attempt at verifying the credibility of the woman facing him, asked her whether she had ever received a gift from Giulio. "I don't remember", she replied. As if Giulio was just an ordinary student. Far away in time. As if his life hadn't ended as it did.
(Traduzione di Patricia Bayne)
To the point that, yesterday morning, her offices and small 50 square metre house in Cambridge were turned upside down in a long search called for by the public prosecutor's office in Rome and conducted by the English police. Mobile phones, pen drives, computer and external hard-drives were sequestered. All while the same university, going above and beyond that which was asked by the Italian judiciary, froze her IT channels (email traffic and files archived on the university server) so that the data could be copied and entered as forensic evidence into the inquiry by the public prosecutor's office in Rome. Abdel Rahman is, and will remain, a witness of Italian justice.
Giulio Regeni's assassins (both instigators and perpetrators) remain to be found within the mechanisms of the Egyptian regime. For Italian justice, and now for Egyptian justice (if the outcome of the last meeting in Cairo between the two prosecutors is not a false motion). Nevertheless, the search and seizure of Abdel Rahman's technological devices communicates somewhat dramatically not only the deterioration of an unprecedented situation by many aspects (it is rare that English judicial cooperation is pushed to the point of authorising the search of a witness), as well as the decision by the English Government to emerge from a two-year long aphasia, but a development in the reconstruction of the facts which led to the death of Giulio. A circumstance which emerged during the interrogation and which can be recounted like this. A move which, objectively, marked and accelerated the destiny of Giulio Regeni, intensifying the paranoia of the Egyptian security apparatus who had put him on their radar, carries the signature of the professor.
As documented in an email that Giulio sent to his mother on 14th November 2015, just over two months before he was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Al-Sisi regime forces, it was Maha who sent Giulio a link for the application process suggesting that he convinced the trade union on which he was conducting his "participatory research" to compete for the £10,000 made available by the Antipode foundation, thus allowing them to finance their own "project from below". Thus, whetting the appetite of Mohamed Abdallah, leader of the trade union of street vendors at the time, the man who betrayed Giulio and who was his primary research source. It is common knowledge that the possibility of acquiring that money would remain on paper. In fact, after speaking with Abdallah, Giulio dropped the matter. He surmised that the street vendor was thinking of using that money for personal use. Furthermore, not only were the funds not available to Giulio, but they were at risk, as Giulio discovered, of being incompatible with Egyptian law which prohibits direct or indirect financing of trade unions and associations.
During her deposition, Abdel Rahman was not only unable to explain why she made that suggestion nor why, as an Egyptian, she didn't gather all the risky facts. Facts which Giulio, on the other hand, had certainly gathered. She was also unable to explain two other situations, neutral by certain aspects. She denied the evidence - documented in a chat between Giulio and a friend on 15th July 2015 - that she had suggested the topic of the research to Giulio. She denied ever receiving the ten reports documenting the results of the first phase of Giulio's work, given to her during their meeting on 7th January 2016 in Cairo. She reaffirmed, as she has been doing for two years, that there were no objective elements of risk in Giulio's research procedure. A situation in which our investigators contrarily see negligence or an attempt to cover it in retrospect. All the more so to have decided, between Tuesday and yesterday, to have 66 Cambridge students who had carried out research in Cairo and Egypt prior to Giulio (not only for the department where the professor teaches), as many questionnaires that clarify which procedures have governed the work of the university over the years. Who decides which themes of research; what type of relationship is held with the tutor; whether there was any pressure from the university to conduct the research in Egypt; who chose the tutor on site.
Finally, there is one last detail that today allows us to demonstrate how the iron fist of Professor Abdel Rahman led with the Public Prosecutor's Office in Rome (also recently sustained by a faction of academic community who felt that their freedom of teaching had been wounded) which in reality disguises a much less edifying framework. Courteously, at the very least. Giulio gave Maha, whom he trusted, a copy of the bestseller, 'Gomorra', by Roberto Saviano. He did this after giving it much thought. As a gesture of respect. On Tuesday afternoon, the DA Sergio Colaiocco, in an attempt at verifying the credibility of the woman facing him, asked her whether she had ever received a gift from Giulio. "I don't remember", she replied. As if Giulio was just an ordinary student. Far away in time. As if his life hadn't ended as it did.
(Traduzione di Patricia Bayne)