(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 2 - One of the four Egyptian intelligence officers on trial in absentia in Rome in the January-February 2016 torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni took part in the joint Egyptian-Italian initial investigations into the Cambridge University doctoral researcher's death, witnesses told the trial Thursday.
    In the inspection carried out on 10 February 2016 on the site where Regeni's half-naked and mutilated body was found in a ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria highway on February 3, an inspection carried out by the two investigation teams, one Egyptian and the other Italian, one of the defendants in the trial in Rome, intelligence officer Colonel Uhsam Helmi, was also present, said a witness belonging to the ROS and SCO special branch police units.
    National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif, are on trial on suspicion of torturing to death the 28-year-oild Friuli-born Regeni from January 25 to February 3 that year because they thought he was a spy due to his politically sensitive work on independent Cairo street seller unions. (ANSA).