Egypt wants truth on Regeni, Sisi tells Conte

(ANSA) - Cairo, January 14 - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told Premier Giuseppe Conte in Cairo Tuesday that Egypt wants to get to the truth about the torture and murder in the Egyptian capital in early 2016 of Italian student Giulio Regeni.
    He said Cairo "confirms its full support for the current cooperation between the authorities involved in Egypt and Italy to uncover the circumstances of the case".
    Regeni, 28, a Cambridge University doctoral researcher working on street unions, was found dead in a ditch on the motorway to Alexandria on February 3, 2016.
    He was last seen alive on the Cairo metro on January 25, the highly policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak.
    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.
    It has since tentatively resumed.
    Last month Rome prosecutors Sergio Colaiocco and Michele Prestipino said that Regeni was caught by a "spider's web" spun by the Egyptian security services.
    "A spider's web was spun around Giulio Regeni by the Egyptian National Security Service in October (2015) before the kidnapping and murder," Colaiocco and Prestipino told a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Friuli-born student's death.
    "A spider's web in which the (security) apparatus used the people who were closest to Giulio in Cairo, including his lawyer flat mate, the street traders union representative and Noura Whaby, his friend who helped him with translations".
    "It was a spider's web that closed in more and more and which Giulio ended up in the middle of".
    Sisi has denied any official involvement in Regeni's death.