Truth on Regeni murder remains fundamental goal - Di Maio

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 30 - Getting to the truth about the torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo remains a fundamental goal for Italy, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the parliamentary commission of inquiry into his death Thursday.
    "The search for the truth has always been, and will continue to be, a fundamental goal to be reached in our relations with Egypt," he said.
    "Giulio and his family, but also Italy as a whole, are entitled to the truth".
    "Achieving a definitive picture, sanctioned by a fair trial, will not bring Giulio back to his parents, but it will reaffirm the force of the values of justice, transparency and rule of law in which he believed," he said, reiterating the government's sympathies for the Regenis.
    Di Maio also reiterated former Rome chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone's verdict that keeping Italy's ambassador to Cairo in place had been the "right choice" despite the lack of cooperation from Egypt in the case.
    On May 24 four Egyptian intelligence service members were indicted in Rome for kidnapping, torturing and murdering Cambridge research student Regeni in Cairo in 2016.
    National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif will stand trial in absentia in Rome starting October 14.
    On January 25 this year, the fifth anniversary of Regeni's disappearance on the Cairo metro, President Sergio Mattarella demanded a response from Egypt over the Friuli-born student's torture and murder.
    The brutalised body of the Cambridge University doctoral researcher into the politically sensitive topic of Egyptian street unions was found a week later, on February 3, 2016, in a ditch on the road to Alexandria.
    He had been tortured so badly his mother said she only recognised him by the tip of his nose.
    Regeni's parents, Claudio Regeni and Paola Deffendi, have accused the Italian government of continuing to do business with Egypt, selling Cairo two frigates.
    Rome prosecutors say that Regeni was tortured for days, resulting in "acute physical suffering" by being subjected to kicks, punches, beaten with sticks and bats and cut with sharp objects, and also being burned with red-hot objects and slammed into walls.
    Egypt's prosecutor general, Hamada al Sawi, has said "there is insufficient evidence to prove the charges".
    At various times Egypt has advanced differing explanations for Regeni's death including a car accident, a gay lovers' tiff and abduction and murder by an alleged kidnapping gang that was wiped out after Regeni's documents were planted in their lair.
    The head of the street hawkers union had fingered Regeni as a possible spy.
    Lack of cooperation on the case by Egypt led to Rome's temporarily withdrawing its ambassador from Cairo. (ANSA).