Regeni case 'an open wound' - Gentiloni (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - The case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year, is "an open wound" for Italy, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Wednesday. Gentiloni 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 this 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 a 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.