Rome prosecutors Sergio Colaiocco and Michele Prestipino said Tuesday that Giulio Regeni, an Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo in early 2016, was caught be "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 28-year-old'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". Rome 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.
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.
Claudio and Paola Regeni, the student's parents, thanked the prosecutors. "Over the last few years we have had to fight against violence, red herrings, omertà, time wasting and betrayal," they said.
"We are grateful to our prosecutors and the investigative teams for the tireless work they have done over the last four years in harmony with us and our lawyer.
"If we have the name of some of those responsible for the kidnapping, torture and killing of Giulio, and if some of them are under investigation, we owe it to them".
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