Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni was kidnapped and murdered in Cairo
Italy’s government has demanded a breakthrough in the investigation into the death of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Egypt more than two years ago.
Regeni, 28, was a Cambridge PhD student conducting sensitive research into labour unions in Egypt when he went missing in Cairo on 25 January 2016. He was found dead by the side of a road outside the city eight days later, his body showing signs of extensive torture.
The circumstances of Regeni’s death remain unclear. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said last month that Cairo was determined to conclude a joint investigation with Italy to bring the killers to justice.
At a meeting with Sisi this week, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio praised investigators in both Egypt and Italy for their work, despite the Italian government having recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April 2016 in protest into the lack of progress in the probe.
Maio said: “I hope that by the end of the year we can get to a breakthrough, and that the meeting between the judicial authorities can take place as soon as possible.”
What happened to Guilio Regeni?
“Intelligence and security sources told Reuters in 2016 that police had arrested Regeni outside a Cairo metro station on 25 January of that year and then transferred him to a compound run by homeland security,” the news agency reports.
Egyptian authorities have denied any involvement in his death.
The case has caused “intense diplomatic tension, not only because of the alleged involvement of the government [of Sisi], but because Egyptian authorities have failed to offer adequate assistance to Italian investigators”, says The Guardian.
Last week, the newspaper printed a letter signed by more than 200 academics that said Regeni “was one of many students and academics who have been arrested, tortured, jailed and killed in recent years in Egypt”.
What has Egypt said?
Egypt’s initial response proved controversial. Despite rumours of government or police involvement, Egyptian investigators “declined to question the authorities”. They instead claimed in March 2016 that Egyptian police had shot dead four men believed to be responsible for Regeni’s death, says The Economist.
Investigators said that the men had “specialised in impersonating policemen, kidnapping foreigners and stealing their money”, but offered no further details.
“Few people outside of Egypt are buying it,” says the news magazine. “Several questions remain unanswered, such as: why did the kidnappers keep Regeni’s belongings for weeks after killing him? Why would thieves torture him for days? And why were they not arrested instead of killed? No one expects the answers to come from Cairo.”
CCTV footage from the metro station where Regeni was last seen has also proved highly significant in both the investigation and diplomatic relations between Italy and Egypt.
In the wake of Regeni’s death, Italian authorities demanded the CCTV tapes, but Egyptian investigators insisted the footage was “useless” and refused to hand it over for more than two years.
Upon their release to Italian investigators in June this year, authorities discovered that the tapes “contained unexplained gaps and no images of the Italian student”, The Guardian reports.
What about Cambridge University?
The Italian government has also accused Cambridge of stonewalling the investigation, amid claims that supervisors at the university failed to ensure that Regeni’s research work did not bring him into danger, says The Daily Telegraph.
In June 2016, then-deputy minister of foreign affairs Mario Giro, openly criticised Cambridge in a tweet that implied that scholars were hiding something about Regeni’s death.
“Shame on you @Cambridge Uni. You value more your ‘secret researches’ than a human life. What are you hiding? TRUTH FOR Giulio Regeni,” Giro wrote.
Italian investigators have claimed that Regeni’s direct supervisors at Cambridge failed to fully cooperate with the murder investigation, and refused to meet with Italian prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco when he visited the university in the wake of the murder.
Cambridge has strongly refuted claims that it is obstructing the probe, and has criticised the “limited credibility of the far from transparent investigation” conducted by the Egyptian authorities.
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