The Italian judiciary has gone to great lengths to reach a verdict, bending the rules of the trial in order to bring it to a conclusion. The result has been a thoroughly anomalous trial, featuring absent defendants (it is not known whether they are alive or dead), surreal testimony and a compromised right to a fair trial.

The Assize Court has dismissed the murder charge, finding the three officers guilty of the charge of abduction in Cairo against the Friulian researcher on 25 January ten years ago. Lawyer Ballerini: “Now the government must also sever ties with a country that tortures and kills.”