Egyptian prosecutors on Tuesday
handed over to Rome prosecutors documents belonging to Giulio
Regeni, the Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo
earlier this year.
Regeni's passport, two Cambridge University cards and his
ATM card were handed over at a meeting in Cairo which Foreign
Minister Paolo Gentiloni called "positive".
Egyptian prosecutors said they found the documents in a
March 24 raid on the home of a relative of an alleged kidnapping
gang wiped out by police and briefly blamed by Egypt for
Regeni's murder - one of a series of versions of events Italy
has not accepted.
Gentiloni tweeted after the prosecutors' meeting:
"Positive visit to Cairo by Rome prosecutor. Giulio's documents
returned to his family. The work continues to establish the
truth".
Gentiloni said last week the Regeni case was "an open
wound" for Italy.
He said "we got some signs of hope from Egyptian judicial
authorities in September which Rome prosecutors interpreted as a
willingness to collaborate," but "we are not satisfied, and it's
no accident that we withdrew our ambassador in Egypt and we have
not yet sent one back to Cairo".
Earlier last month Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
said Italy was falsely charging Egyptian security forces in the
Regeni case because it is heeding "groundless" Egyptian media
reports.
"I say to those who hold dear the interests of Egypt, don't
hurt our interests. Italy, in accusing the Egyptian security
services of killing Giulio Regeni, relied on groundless
information published by Egyptian media. The same thing happened
on the Russian air disaster (in Sinai)," Sisi said.
The Cambridge graduate student, 28, born in the town of
Fiumicello in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region around Trieste,
went missing on the night of January 25, the heavily policed
fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former
strongman Hosni Mubarak.
His burned, mutilated, and partially unclothed body turned
up in a ditch on the road to Alexandria on February 3.
Rights groups including Amnesty International have said he
is among hundreds of people who have disappeared in Egypt over
the past year.
Cairo has repeatedly denied the allegations that elements
of the Egyptian state were behind the murder, offering a series
of explanations ranging from a car crash to a gay lovers'
quarrel gone wrong to the purported kidnap for ransom.
Italy has rejected these versions and is pressing to get at
the truth, withholding its new ambassador from taking up his
post in Cairo.
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