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.
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