Cooperating on Regeni truth and justice says Sisi

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 7 - The official spokesman of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Bassam Radi, told ANSA after Premier Giorgia Meloni stressed to Sisi Italy's strong focus on respecting human rights in the abduction, torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni that "the meeting touched on the question of Italian student Regeni and cooperation to reach the truth and obtain justice".
    Italy has "strong attention" for the cases of Regeni, an Italian doctoral student abducted, tortured and murdered in Cairo in early 2016, and of Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian student at Bologna University who has been charged with subversion in Egypt since February 2020, Meloni told Sisi on the sidelines of the CoP27 meeting in Egypt Monday, the premier's office said.
    It was the first visit to Egypt by an Italian premier since Regeni's murder, which has strained bilateral ties amid a Rome prosecution request to hand over four Egyptian intelligence officers suspected of torturing the 28-year-old Friuli-born Cambridge University researcher to death because they thought he was spying on Cairo due to his work with street unions.
    The bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Sharm el Sheikh summit on climate change, the premier's office said, gave Meloni an "opportunity to raise the issue of respect for human rights and to underline Italy's strong attention on the cases of Giulio Regeni and Patrick Zaki," who is accused of spreading fake news and calling for unauthorised protests.
    The Italian justice ministry said last month that it has had no response from Egypt over its calls for cooperation in the case of the four Egyptian intelligence officers suspected of Regeni's abduction, torture and murder. The trial against the four has been suspended after a Rome court ruled that it could not go ahead because the defendants had not been notified of its existence. Italy has been trying to notify the four officers of their indictments in order to proceed with their trial in absentia but the efforts ran into a brick wall last year after Cairo refused to help locate them.
    The four Egyptian officials are National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif Regeni, a Cambridge University doctoral researcher, was tortured to death while in Egypt to work on research into Cairo street hawkers' unions. A fresh hearing in the case has been set for February 13 in Rome.
    Zaki, who spent 18 months in police custody, is also set to face a fresh hearing in Cairo soon. (ANSA).