Italy has cast doubt on Egypt's explanation for the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, after Egyptian police said they had killed four gang members and found the victim's passport at one of their apartments.
Protesters hold an Italian flag with photos of Giulio Regeni, during a
demonstration in front of the Egypt's embassy in Rome, on Feb 25, 2016.
(Photo: AFP/Filippo Monteforte)
ROME: Italy has cast doubt on Egypt's explanation for the
murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, after Egyptian police said he
was the victim of a criminal gang after they had killed four gang
members and found his passport among them.
Italy "will not stop until we have the truth," warned Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi in his weekly e-news letter, saying the country
would not be "satisfied with some convenient truth" and urging the
Egyptians to keep investigating.
Regeni, 28, disappeared in central Cairo on January 25. His
body was found nine days later on the side of a motorway, badly
mutilated and showing signs of torture.
Prosecutors in Rome have rejected the latest conclusions of
the Egyptian probe, while Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni wrote
on his Twitter feed late Friday: "Italy insists: we want the truth."
Italian media and Western diplomatic sources in Cairo have voiced
suspicions that Egyptian security services kidnapped and tortured the
Cambridge University graduate student to death.
On Thursday, Egyptian police said they had identified people
linked to Regeni's murder, after killing four members of a criminal
gang and finding the victim's passport in one of their apartments.
Egyptian prosecutors on Saturday ordered the detention of
four people over Regeni's murder, all of them closely related to the
leader of the gang who was killed in the shootout with police.
The four suspects are accused of concealing a crime and being in the possession of stolen material, a prosecution official said.
Rome prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone said in a statement that "details
communicated so far are not satisfactory to shed light on the death of
Giulio Regeni. Investigations must therefore continue."
According to Italian government sources, premier Renzi has
promised the parents of the young student that Rome will continue to put
pressure on Egypt to establish the full truth behind his death.
Quoted by Italian press, Regeni's parents said they were
"injured and bitter" at the Egyptian authorities' latest attempt to
explain their son's murder.
Two of Regeni's friends quoted by the Corriere della Sera newspaper
said that glasses and a quantity of cannabis apparently found by police
in the student's room definitely did not belong to him.
Regeni had been researching labour movements in Egypt, a
sensitive topic, and had written articles critical of the government
under a pen name.
The incident has threatened relations between Egypt and
Italy, a strong supporter of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi whose
security services have been accused of abusing dissidents.
- AFP/ec
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