Egypt - Giulio Regeni, 28, murdered, Cambridge PhD student, Cairo, 25 Jan 2016 *arrests*

An Italian student who went missing in Cairo has been found dead and an investigation has been launched into signs of torture on his body, Egyptian security officials have said.

Click to expand...

A person with knowledge of the case has told The Associated Press that the partially burned body of a missing Italian student has been found by the side of a road on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital.

The body of Giulio Regeni was found on Wednesday along the Cairo-Alexandria Road in the 6 October suburb in western Cairo and was positively identified by people who knew him.

Click to expand...

CAIRO - The body of an Italian student who went missing in Cairo was found half naked by the roadside with cigarette burns and other signs of torture, a senior Egyptian prosecutor said on Thursday.

Click to expand...

A copy of Regeni's CV, provided by another friend, indicated he spoke four languages and had won several scholarships.

Click to expand...

While Regeni was known to be an academic researcher, the Italian news agency Ansa on Thursday reported that he also wrote about his work on Egyptian labour unions for Il Manifesto, the Italian communist newspaper. Ansa reported that he used a pseudonym because he was allegedly concerned for his safety.

His work for Il Manifesto was confirmed by Simone Pieranni, the newspaper’s foreign editor, who said it would be publishing Regeni’s previous works on Friday, including a piece written shortly before his death...

Click to expand...

CAIRO -- The body of the Italian student who was found this week in a Cairo suburb was flown back to Italy Saturday morning, Egyptian airport officials and Italy's foreign minister said.

Paolo Gentiloni told reporters in Amsterdam that the body of 28-year-old Giulio Regeni was being transported to Rome and eventually to the Italian city of Trieste.

Italy's ANSA news agency reported that Italian prosecutors have ordered an autopsy as part of the investigation into Regeni's death.

Click to expand...

ROME -- A second autopsy on the body of an Italian found slain in Egypt reveals that the doctoral student suffered "inhuman, animal-like" violence, Italy's interior minister said Sunday as he pressed Egypt's president to fully co-operate with the criminal investigation.

Click to expand...

The Egyptian Association for Rights and Freedoms documented 314 such disappearances in 2015, according to a lawyer, Halem Henish. Most later turned up in prison, but at least five were found at the morgue, including one with signs of torture like burns and electric shocks. He said the group has documented 35 disappearances so far in 2016, including at least two of whom have died.

News reports in Italy have said Italian authorities strongly suspect Egyptian security forces interrogated Regeni to learn about the contacts he made as part of his research with the labour world and other activists, and tortured and killed him.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Egypt's foreign minister vehemently denied those allegations as "judgments, accusations and insinuations, unjustified and without proof."

Click to expand...

The prosecutor general's office said it would not publicly disclose the contents of the report as the investigation was ongoing. Reuters was not able to obtain a copy to verify the contents.

However, a senior source at the forensics authority told Reuters Regeni, a graduate student at Britain's Cambridge University, had seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain haemorrhage.

His body also bore signs of cuts from a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor, abrasions, and bruises. He was likely assaulted using a stick as well as being punched and kicked, the source added.

A second autopsy in Italy "confronted us with something inhuman, something animal", Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told Sky News 24 television last week.

Click to expand...

Two Italian newspapers claimed Wednesday that the police officer who led the initial investigation into the death of Giulio Regeni had ordered the abduction and torture of the Italian student.

"The order to abduct Giulio Regeni was given by [police] General Khaled Shalabi, head of criminal police and Giza investigation department," who previously had him followed and his apartment searched, La Repubblica newspaper reported.

La Repubblica also implicated Egypt's leadership in the death of Regeni, saying they were aware of and approved his abduction.
[/url]

Click to expand...

The parents of a Cambridge University graduate who was murdered in Egypt, allegedly by the secret police, have threatened to release more than 250 photos of his horrifically tortured body unless Britain, Italy and the EU ramp up pressure on Cairo to investigate his mysterious death.

Click to expand...

Egypt is considering means of retaliating against a recent decision by Italy to stop providing it with military spare parts in response to the unsolved murder earlier this year of an Italian postgraduate student in Cairo.

The decision -- approved by Italy’s parliament late last month -- "calls for corresponding action [by Egypt] in regards to cooperation with Italy, especially in terms of the situation in Libya and the issue of illegal immigration," Egypt’s Foreign Ministry declared Wednesday evening.

Late last month, Italy’s parliament approved proposals to stop supplying Egypt with spare parts for F-16 fighter jets.

Click to expand...

Tension between Italy and Egypt has escalated in the months since an Italian graduate student who disappeared from Cairo was tortured and killed, with both sides taking part in a series of retaliations. This week, however, the Egyptian House of Representatives decided to switch gears and take a less disruptive approach to resolving the controversy.

A special committee that was formed to follow up on the murder of Giulio Regeni — comprising members of parliament's defense, human rights and foreign relations committees — recommended July 18 that any future measures taken should employ “calm parliamentary diplomacy” instead of “confrontational diplomacy.”

Click to expand...