Rome prosecutors probing the
torture and murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Cairo
last year have made another request for information from Cairo
prosecutors, judicial sources said Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano raised the question of
Regeni with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry during a
meeting of European ministers on March 6.
"I will tell him that as far as we are concerned the case can
only be closed by the word 'truth'. There are no words that are
subordinate to truth," Alfano said before the meeting.
After the working lunch with Shoukry, Alfano said his
Egyptian counterpart had reiterated that Cairo would do its
"all" to get at the truth about the Cambridge doctoral student
from northeastern Italy.
Egypt, Alfano said, "wants ties with Italy to be fully
restored", referring to the current lack of an ambassador in
Cairo, because of the case.
Alfano said Cairo was "prepared to retrieve the truth out of
any drawer it might be in, giving a helping hand until the end
to find those responsible for the murder".
Regeni, 28, went missing in the Egyptian capital on January
25, 2016, on the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the
uprising that ousted former strongman and president Hosni
Mubarak.
His severely tortured, mutilated body was found on February 3
in a ditch on the city's outskirts.
Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are
frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were
involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student.
Egyptian and Italian prosecutors have been working on the
case but Rome has yet to send a new ambassador to Cairo in
protest at the lack of progress.
At the end of January the deputy head of the Egyptian
parliament's foreign affairs committee, Tarek El Khouly,
repeated that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi wants to
find the people who tortured and murdered Regeni.
"I think there is an order from the Egyptian political
leaders, from the president in person, to the general prosecutor
to discover who killed Regeni, whoever that may be," El Khouly
told ANSA.
"I think that, in any part of the world, mistakes are made by
security apparatus. Perhaps it is a crime concerning an Egyptian
security apparatus, perhaps not," said El Khouly, adding that
the Regeni case had been politically "exploited" in both Egypt
and Italy and urging a "separation" between Italy-Egypt ties and
the case.
It recently emerged that the head of the Egyptian street
sellers' trade union secretly filmed Regeni for the Cairo police
in December 2015. The union official, Mohammed Abdallah, said he
had agreed to do his patriotic duty because Regeni was a "spy".
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