Italy recalls ambassador to Egypt over student’s murder row

PanARMENIAN.Net - Italy has recalled its ambassador to Cairo in protest at the lack of progress in the investigation by Egyptian authorities into the torture and murder of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student whose high-profile case has raised diplomatic tensions between the two countries, The Guardian reports.

The Italian foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, ordered Maurizio Massari to return to Italy, following two days of talks in Rome between Egyptian investigators and their Italian counterparts.

Regeni’s body was found on a Cairo roadside on 3 February. A PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, Regeni, 28, was working on labour unions when he disappeared on the 25 January anniversary of the Egyptian uprising.

Egyptian officials initially said he may have been killed in a traffic accident but autopsies carried out in Cairo and Rome showed Regeni had suffered extensive and prolonged torture before his death.

Authorities in Cairo later suggested that Regeni had been killed by a criminal gang, which had hoped to force him to empty his bank account. But outside observers said the murder bears the hallmarks of a state-sponsored killing.

Amid growing anger over the speed and direction of the Egyptian investigation, a team led by Cairo’s deputy prosecutor, Mostafa Soliman, travelled to Rome to present a 2,000-page dossier of their findings with Italian officials.

The recall was widely seen in Italy as a sign that the meetings had failed to satisfy Italian authorities.

The case has provoked indignation in Italy, where Regeni’s mother addressed parliament, and leading politicians have called for the truth about his death to be told.