President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told Italy’s visiting interior minister on Wednesday that Egypt was determined to conclude an investigation into the 2016 murder of an Italian student and bring his killers to justice, the presidential palace said.
Giulio Regeni disappeared on Jan. 25, 2016 while doing a postgraduate research on Egyptian trade unions. His body was discovered on Feb. 3 and Egyptian investigators found signs of extensive torture.
Intelligence and security sources told Reuters in 2016 that police had arrested Regeni outside a Cairo metro station on Jan. 25 of that year and then transferred him to a compound run by Homeland Security.
Egyptian officials have denied any involvement in Regeni’s death and Sisi has said his government is committed to finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice.
In the statement, the presidential palace said that Egyptian Interior Minister Mahmoud Tawfiq and the head of General Intelligence, Abbas Kamel, also attended the meeting with the Italian Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini in Cairo.
“The President stressed the strong will and desire to reach final results in the investigation of the Italian student Giulio Regeni​’s case, and the detection of the perpetrators to achieve justice,” the English-language statement said.
Egypt was keen to “cooperate through the concerned bodies and judicial authorities with the Italian counterpart in this regard,” it added.
The statement quoted Salvini as praising Egyptian authorities for their cooperation in Regeni’s case.
Egyptian and Italian investigators have been working together to retrieve CCTV recordings from Cairo metro stations as part of the investigation.
The two sides said last month they had found gaps in the footage from inside and around Cairo metro stations and were trying to discover the cause.
Reuters