An artistic journey at the heart of an open wound
On February 2, 2016, I drew a portrait of an Italian young man who had disappeared in Cairo. On the drawing I wrote: “A student went to ride the metro and… disappeared. Giulio Regeni, Cambridge PhD student, AUC visiting scholar.”
The day after that drawing was published, Giulio Regeni’s body was found on the side of a road on the outskirts of Cairo, along the highway connecting the capital to Alexandria. The location was in the immediate vicinity of a facility linked to the Egyptian security services.
The body showed clear signs of prolonged violence. Subsequent autopsies carried out in Italy documented fractures, burns, cuts, bruises, and injuries consistent with systematic torture. The wounds could not be attributed to a random assault, but pointed instead to an illegal detention lasting several days, during which Giulio was subjected to violent interrogations.
From the very first hours, both the circumstances of the discovery and the condition of the body raised serious doubts about the version of events provided by the Egyptian authorities. Official explanations changed repeatedly in the weeks that followed, never producing a coherent or verifiable reconstruction of the facts. The case quickly took on an international dimension, becoming one of the most serious human rights violations involving an Italian citizen abroad in recent decades.
The brutality of the torture and the location where the body was found transformed Giulio Regeni’s disappearance into a political and judicial case of global significance, marking a deep rupture in relations between Italy and Egypt and making it immediately clear that this was not an ordinary crime, but a killing linked to state security apparatuses.
From that moment on, the drawing began to circulate widely in newspapers and television news reports. The Regeni case became central to public debate because of its gravity and brutality. The image appeared, among others, in la Repubblica, Il Piccolo of Trieste, La7, and Il Messaggero.
In the years that followed, I continued to engage with the case, producing numerous drawings, comics, animations, and eventually even a mosaic.
Those first words spoken publicly by Giulio’s mother immediately transformed the Regeni case from a news story into a national public issue. Paola Deffendi spoke in a simple, direct language, without emphasis, yet with unmistakable political clarity. It was at that moment that the demand for “Truth for Giulio Regeni” began to take shape as a civic slogan, later adopted by Amnesty International and a broad segment of Italian civil society. From then on, every one of her interventions maintained the same tone: no concessions to pathos, no retreat on the question of responsibility, no willingness to accept silence.
I later had the opportunity to hear Paola Deffendi, Giulio’s father, and the lawyer Alessandra Ballerini speak in person at the Internazionale Festival, where I had been commissioned by editor-in-chief Giovanni De Mauro to create an illustrated reportage of the festival.
During those years, I was also directing a “Komikazen” comics festival. In 2016, its final edition took place in Rimini. The festival poster was dedicated to Giulio, and every participant was given Amnesty’s yellow wristband.
In 2017, I joined the initiative launched by Articolo21 titled “Scorta Mediatica” (“Media Escort”), created to ensure public visibility and symbolic protection for those who, in demanding truth and justice for Giulio Regeni, were exposed to pressure, isolation, and personal risk. The idea of the escort was not physical but informational: keeping media attention alive as a form of protection against silence and erasure.
For this initiative, I created the drawing that became its symbolic image, used in public communication and awareness campaigns. Alongside this work, I produced a series of videos and illustrations dedicated to Giulio, designed for online circulation and to accompany public moments of mobilization.
In the same context, I also created portraits of Ibrahim Metwaly, the Egyptian lawyer representing the Regeni family, who was arrested and forcibly disappeared in Cairo while traveling to Geneva to speak about the case before the United Nations, as well as a portrait of Giulio’s sister, who became one of the most exposed and determined voices in the demand for truth.
In 2018, on the second anniversary of Giulio’s disappearance, I created a short comic for Internazionale’s website titled Giulio Regeni and the Evil of the World, in which, through the words of his mother, I imagined Giulio himself speaking. It was a harsh and difficult story to read. That same year, I produced Another Year Searching for the Truth About the Murder of Giulio Regeni for Eastwest, commissioned by Luigi Spinola, which summarized the events of the previous two years.
Also in 2018, a permanent sign featuring one of my drawings was installed at SISSA – the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste – on the occasion of a conference dedicated to human rights and the responsibility of the academic world. Paola Deffendi also spoke at the event.
The choice of SISSA was not accidental. Giulio Regeni was a researcher, a scholar, part of an international scientific community that crosses borders, languages, and institutions. The sign was meant to state clearly that his death did not concern only the private or political sphere, but directly questioned the world of research, calling it to reflect on its role and on the conditions under which scholars and students operate in repressive contexts.
The drawing, placed in a visible area of the institution, was not commemorative in the traditional sense, but declarative. The plaque accompanying it reads: “Giulio Regeni was a scientist like us. We hope his cruel death may serve to focus our attention on the need to respect human rights.”
Through these words, the institution publicly assumed responsibility: recognizing Giulio as part of its community and transforming his killing into a permanent, non-rhetorical warning about the need to defend human rights as a fundamental condition of academic freedom.
Paola Deffendi’s presence at the conference gave that moment an added significance. Her testimony directly connected personal grief with the public duty of memory, reinforcing the meaning of the sign as a concrete act of taking a stand, rather than a purely symbolic gesture.
On December 19, a mosaic dedicated to Giulio Regeni was inaugurated in the municipal building of Ravenna. The work emerged from a collective project developed in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna, Amnesty International’s Ravenna group, and was strongly supported by the then mayor, Michele De Pascale.
The choice of mosaic was deliberate. In Ravenna, a city where this technique is a historic and identity-defining tradition, mosaic becomes a tool of lasting memory, designed to endure over time and to inhabit an institutional public space. The work is located inside the municipal building, a place of civic representation, and visibly and permanently affirms the city’s decision not to remove the Regeni case from its public conscience.
The project involved students and faculty from the Academy of Fine Arts, turning the process into a formative experience as well as an artistic one. Giulio’s image was translated into the language of mosaic through a shared effort in which manual practice was intertwined with political and civic reflection on the meaning of memory and justice.
Collaboration with Amnesty Ravenna placed the work within a broader framework of human rights advocacy, strengthening the link between the image and the demand for truth. The public inauguration was not only a commemorative moment, but a clear institutional stance: recognizing Giulio Regeni as part of a collective history that directly implicates the responsibilities of the state and local administrations.
The mosaic, still visible today, continues to function as active memory: not a concluded tribute, but a permanent marker reminding those who pass through that space of the need not to archive the case and to continue demanding truth and justice for Giulio Regeni.
Throughout these years, I have continued to remember Giulio, returning repeatedly to his figure through new drawings and public works. Not as an exercise in commemoration, but as an act of continuity: a way of rescuing his story from oblivion and from the risk of normalization. Each image has been a form of presence, an attempt to keep open a question that still has no answer.
January 25, 2026 marks the anniversary of the day Giulio Regeni disappeared in Cairo. Ten years later, the passage of time has not produced definitive judicial truth. The trial has gone through complex phases, delays, diplomatic obstacles, and postponements, revealing a fragmented justice system unable to fully reach accountability.
In this context, continuing to draw Giulio means reaffirming that his story is not over. That the absence of a verdict does not mark the end of the demand for truth. Images, like the words of his family, continue to serve a public function: reminding us that behind procedures, dossiers, and the long timelines of justice there is a life cut short and a demand that remains intact.
Until there is justice for Giulio, his name will continue to be spoken, written, and drawn. Not out of nostalgia, but out of responsibility.
