Egypt hijacker claims he saw murdered Italian student in prison

An Egyptian hijacker who’s fighting his extradition accuses Egypt’s military-backed government of torturing and killing an Italian doctoral student, claiming he saw Giulio Regeni being interrogated in a Cairo prison.

In a surprising twist to lengthy extradition proceedings, Seif Eddin Mustafa tells a Cypriot court that he hijacked the domestic EgyptAir flight in March intending to seek asylum in Italy in order to “point the finger” at the Egyptian military regime.

Mustafa says he caught a glimpse from behind a blindfold of a “foreign-looking” person in Lazogli prison during his nearly two-month detention there in December and January after being arrested for using a false Ukrainian passport. He says he recognized Regeni from photos he came across after his release.

Regeni disappeared in Cairo on January 25 and his body — which bore signs of severe torture — was found nine days later on a suburban Cairo road.

“Regeni was in reality held by security forces and was interrogated at the same prison as I was in Lazogli Cairo,” Mustafa says in a lengthy statement in Arabic that he reads out in court.

“Upon getting released and seeing his pictures, I connected all these facts together and I realized that the person found dead in the street was the same person I saw when I was detained,” he says.

Mustafa says he committed the March 29 hijacking to “expose (Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s) fascist regime to the world.”

The six-hour ordeal ended peacefully on the tarmac of Cyprus’ Larnaca airport where the plane was diverted after all 72 passengers and crew were released and Mustafa was arrested.

— AP