Greater coop over Regeni case Di Maio tells Shoukry

(ANSA) - Rome, December 5 - Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio on Thursday told Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry that greater cooperation was needed on the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo in early 2016.
    Meeting at the Italian foreign ministry on the sidelines of the Med Dialogues opening tomorrow in the Italian capital, Di Maio called for "greater bilateral cooperation to bring to justice those responsible for the barbaric murder" of Regeni.
    Last week Italian police chief Franco Gabrielli said the Regeni case should not be mixed up with relations with Egypt.
    Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of police representatives from African countries including Egypt Wednesday, he said collaboration with Egypt and "reasons of State" cannot "cloud our will to ask the maximum in answers on the Regeni case".
    The right to get the truth from Egypt on the murder cannot be "compressed", Gabrielli said.
    This need to get to the truth "is a family's and also a whole country's, regarding Giulio's tragic end".
    The individual criminal case and diplomatic and trade ties cannot be mixed up, Gabrielli said, "unless one decides that there must be no relations with Egypt".
    Regeni's family have been fighting to get the truth about the horrific death of their 28-year-old son, whom they said they recognised "only by the tip of his nose" after the torture.
    They recently urged Italy and Germany to withdraw their ambassadors from Egypt to up pressure on Cairo to help get to the truth about their son's death.
    "Declaring Egypt an unsafe country and recalling the ambassadors could be a strong signal that we expect human rights to be respected," Paola and Claudio Regeni wrote to the foreign affairs committee of the Italian and German parliaments.
    Last May one of five Egyptian secret service officers suspected of involvement in his abduction, torture and murder allegedly admitted to abducting him in a conversation overheard by a witness at a restaurant, Italian dailies Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica reported.
    The intelligence service agent reportedly did not realize that someone was listening to his conversation.
    He allegedly told the person he was dining with: "We kidnapped Regeni. We though he was a British spy".
    Rome prosecutors investigating the case have requested a new international 'rogatory' questioning of those implicated.
    The prosecutors last year placed several members of the Egyptian security apparatus under investigation for the death of Regni, who was researching Cairo street seller unions for his Cambridge University doctoral thesis.
    The Italian Lower House has set up a commission of inquiry into the case.
    Regeni's family has appealed on several occasions to Egyptian President Mogham Fattah el-Sisi, who has promised to see the truth emerge.
    Regeni disappeared on the Cairo metro on February 25, 2016, the highly policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak.
    His mutilated body was found in a ditch on the highway to Alexandria on February 3.
    At various stages, Egypt has put out several explanations for his death including a car accident, a gay lovers' tiff turned ugly and a kidnapping for ransom in which the alleged gang, criminals but presumably innocent of the Regeni murder, were later wiped out.
    Judicial cooperation between Rome and Cairo prosecutors dried up after the Roman prosecutors placed the five members of the security apparatus under investigation.