Interior Minister Angelino
Alfano told RAI public broadcaster Friday he is confident
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi won't back out of
working with Italy to find the killers of slain Italian student
Giulio Regeni.
"We have one single objective: the truth," Alfano said. "I
am convinced Al-Sisi won't shirk...and that our good relations
with Egypt will be a lubricant aiding in the search for truth."
Alfano added that "all procedures will be activated so that
severe justice will be meted out to those responsible".
Government sources told ANSA late Thursday that a team of
seven State, Carabinieri and Interpol police officers is set to
leave for Cairo today to closely follow the investigation into
the violent death of the 28-year-old doctoral student, who went
missing January 25 and was found yesterday in a ditch on the
outskirts of Cairo with signs of torture on his body.
Egyptian authorities turned his body over to Umberto I
Italian Hospital in the Egyptian capital late yesterday.
It had emerged earlier in the day that Regeni freelanced
with Italian leftwing daily il manifesto.
He covered Egyptian trade unions and used a pen name
"because he feared for his safety", the Rome paper told ANSA.
Also on Thursday, one of Regenis' Egyptian friends told
Egyptian paper Al Ahram that the post-doctoral student was
seeking contacts with labor activists so he could interview
them.
"Security officers summoned me after Regeni disappeared (on
January 25)," said the friend, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "They wanted to know about the purpose of his visit
and of his studies".
Regeni, 28, was a Cambridge University doctoral student
and a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo
(AUC).
His body showed signs of cigarette burns, stab wounds,
torture, and of having suffered a "slow death", the Associated
Press quoted Egyptian prosecutors as saying.
Egyptian prosecution sources said Regeni had contusions
around the eyes "as though he had been punched (as well as)
signs of torture and wounds all over the body".
The Egyptian interior ministry revealed last week that of
191 disappearances listed by the country's National Council for
Human Rights (NCHR), 99 occurred in custody.
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