Italy frets over fate of porn actor arrested in Egypt

By Claudia Cristoferi

The arrest of an Italian-Egyptian pornographic actor in Cairo is raising concern among officials in Italy, where feelings are still running high over the unresolved killing of student Giulio Regeni who was arrested and killed in Egypt eight years ago.

Elanain Sherif, 44, known by his stage name of Sheri Taliani, was picked up at Cairo airport on Nov. 9 and taken to prison without any official explanation, his lawyer said on Friday, confirming reports in Italian newspapers.

Online publication of pornography is illegal in Egypt, and Sherif's lawyer, Alessandro Russo, told Reuters this may have been the reason for the arrest, though he had received no notification from the Egyptian authorities.

The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the government and Italy's embassy in Cairo were following the case "with the utmost attention".

Sherif was transferred from a Cairo prison to another penitentiary near Alexandria a few days after his arrest and has not been heard of since, the lawyer said, adding that the last person known to have seen him was his mother, the day after he was detained.

Sherif was born in Egypt but lives in Italy and holds both Egyptian and Italian passports.

Russo said he was trying to contact an Egyptian lawyer appointed by Sherif's mother, who had accompanied him to Egypt.

"From Italy we can only try to verify that Elanain Sherif is being treated well, the Egyptian lawyer will take care of the case over there," he said.

"It's clear that we are thinking with concern about the cases of Giulio Regeni and Patrick Zaki."

Italy has charged four Egyptian security agents with kidnapping and killing Regeni, a postgraduate student at Britain's Cambridge University, in Cairo in 2016.

Egyptian police detained him because they thought he was a British spy, according to Italian prosecutors, while Egypt blamed the killing on a group of gangsters after initially suggesting he had died in a road accident or in a sex attack.

Zaki, an Egyptian researcher who had been studying in Italy, was arrested during a trip home to Egypt in 2020. Last year he obtained a pardon from the Egyptian president a day after he was handed a three-year prison term on charges of spreading false news.