(by Catherine Hornby).
Italy on Tuesday denied that an
Italian student who was tortured and slain in Egypt was an
intelligence informer.
Foreign Undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova told the
Lower House that speculation 28-year-old Cambridge University
PhD student Giulio Regeni was working with Italy's secret
services was "patently groundless".
He also told lawmakers that Regeni's body - which was flown
in from Egypt on Saturday - presented "burns and cuts to the
shoulders and chest", describing his death as a "violent, savage
killing".
Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Foreign Policy
magazine in an interview out Tuesday, excerpts of which ran on
Ahram Online, that its security forces had nothing to do with
Regeni's severe torture and murder.
He said journalists were "jumping to conclusions and
speculating without any authoritative information or
authentication". He added that a widely reported number of
40,000 political prisoners in Egypt is "a lie".
Also on Tuesday, the head of the prosecutor's office in the
Egyptian city of Giza, Ahmed Nagy, told ANSA that no phone,
computer or iPad were found in Regeni's apartment or near his
body, which was discovered in a ditch on the outskirts of Cairo
on February 3.
However Italian investigators located Regeni's laptop but
not his cell phone, Rome prosecution sources investigating the
murder said Tuesday.
Egyptian Ambassador to Italy Amr Helmy said whoever killed
Regeni intended to "ruin relations between Italy and Egypt", but
added that economic and political ties between the two countries
would not be compromised.
He said it was not possible to "rule out" that
"fundamentalists, Salafists, extremists or ISIS" were
responsible for the killing.
However no such group has yet claimed responsibility for
the gruesome murder.
A visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo,
Regeni was conducting research for his thesis and reporting on
Egyptian trade unions for leftwing Rome-based paper il
manifesto.
He went missing on January 25, the anniversary of the
uprising that led to Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011.
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