Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh
Shoukry said Friday that Egypt would give Italian prosecutors
investigating the torture and murder of Giulio Regeni CCTV
footage from the metro the day he disappeared.
"As soon as the European company we have tasked with
recovering the images shot by the Cairo underground cameras has
done so, our commitment will be to provide them to Italian
investigators," he said.
Shoukry added, however, that a final decision was down to the
"prosecutor who is independent and will decide on the merits of
the case".
Earlier this month Egyptian President Abdel Fatah
el-Sisi said he wants to "find those guilty" for the death of
Cambridge University researcher Regeni, 28, a Friuli-born
graduate student who was tortured and murdered in Cairo early
last year.
El-Sisi said he believes the murder was an attempt to
frustrate Italian investment in Egypt.
"We are working in a very transparent way with the Italian
authorities," he said.
El-Sisi said Italian-Egyptian relations are among the best,
despite the fact that they were hit hard by the Regeni case.
Egypt has previously given several explanations for Regeni's
death including a car accident, a gay lovers' tiff turned ugly
and murder by an alleged kidnapping gang, later wiped out by
police - all of them rejected by Italy.
Rome prosecutors sent a formal petition to the British
authorities last month to be able to question Regeni's Cambridge
University tutor, Professor Maha Abdelrahman.
The prosecutors also want to acquire the professor's mobile
and fixed-line phone records from between January 2015 and
February 28 2016 to reconstruct her network of relations.
The move regards alleged ambiguity and omissions by the woman
in relation to the probe into the death of Regeni, who
disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016, the heavily policed
fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman
Hosni Mubarak.
His visibly tortured body was found in a ditch on the road to
Alexandria on February 3.
The Cambridge case also reportedly relates to unease
expressed by Regeni in two Skype conversations with his mother
Paola.
Rome prosecutors reportedly want clarification on several
aspects of the case, the newspaper said.
These regard how the subject of Regeni's research on street
trader unions was chosen, the selection of his tutor in Egypt,
the research method used, who decided what questions to ask the
traders and whether Regeni gave the results of his research to
Professor Abdelrahman during a meeting in Cairo on January 7,
2016.
Rome prosecutors have also asked the British judicial
authorities to identify all of the Cambridge University students
working under Abdelrahman who were sent to Cairo between 2012
and 2015, sources said on Thursday.
The petition requests that those students be questioned in
the presence of Italian investigators.
The investigators want to know whether there were other cases
like Regeni's in which students were asked to research the
independent unions in Egypt.
Regeni was asked to look into this by his tutor even though
his PhD regarded the general subject of the North African
nation's economic development.
The British authorities have until January 23 to respond to
this new petition, formally called a European Investigation
Order, after being notified on October 23.
It is the third petition sent to the British authorities over
the Regeni case.
In relation to the first one in June 2016, Abdelrahman
refused to be questioned by the judicial authorities and sent an
email saying she only met Regeni briefly on the morning of
January 7, 2016, in a Cairo bar.
The second one regarded consultancy firm Oxford Analytica,
which said it had not had relations with Regeni after September
2014.
A Cambridge University spokesperson told ANSA that
Abdelrahman "has repeatedly expressed her willingness to fully
cooperate with the Italian prosecutors".
The spokesperson added that the university does not intend
"to respond to sensationalist insinuations that are of no help".
He said the uni had yet to receive a formal request for her
to testify and that it would be "wholly inappropriate" for Dr
Abdelrahman to speak to the media before giving evidence to the
Italian authorities.
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