Green Italy party to sue government over arms sale to Egypt

The Green Italy party yesterday revealed its intention to file a legal complaint in the next few days against the Italian government’s decision to sell weapons to Egypt.

The party’s decision comes after the parents of slain Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, who it is believed was killed by Egyptian security forces in 2016, said they would sue the Italian government for violating the law which prohibits arms sales to countries where serious human rights violations are committed.

In June, Regeni’s parents slammed the government for giving a green light to the sale of two warships to Egypt.

The sale of the two frigates is part of a much larger potential Egyptian-Italian weapons deal estimated to be worth around €10 billion ($12.3 billion), comprising four more frigates, 24 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, 24 M-346 trainer aircraft and a military satellite.

“This government has betrayed us,” Paola and Claudio Regeni told Italian newspaper La Repubblica at the time.

“The limit has been reached, we will no longer allow the government to make fun of us,” they said.

A spokesperson for the Egyptian Armed Forces announced on 31 December that Egypt had received the first FREMM Bergamini frigate at Alexandria’s naval base.

Italy’s friendly relations with post-2013 Egypt were strained temporarily in 2016 when Italian PhD researcher Guilio Regeni disappeared in Cairo for ten days before his corpse was found with signs of torture on the body, in a rubbish container on the outskirts of the city.

The student had been researching independent trade unions in Egypt at the time that he was killed.

READ: Italy rejects Egypt’s decision to close Regeni murder case, vows to escalate