Tortured body of Italian student found outside Cairo

Rome demands action after Giulio Regeni, who disapeared last week, found dead in a ditch

The body of an Italian student who disappeared in Cairo last week has been found showing signs of torture, prompting furious demands from Rome on Thursday for a joint investigation.

Italy summoned Cairo’s envoy to express its “bewilderment over the tragic death” of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student.

Regeni’s half-naked body was found in a ditch outside the Egyptian capital, officials said, after he went missing on January 25 while on his way to meet a Cairo friend.

Public prosecutor Hossam Nassar told AFP that Regeni’s body was discovered early on Wednesday in the roadside ditch on the outskirts of Cairo.

“This is a murder,” Nassar said.

Italian ambassador to Egypt Maurizio Massari, third from the right, arrives on February 4, 2016 to a morgue where the body of Italian student Giulio Regeni was brought after it was found earlier on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP)

Ahmed Negi, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said the body showed clear signs of violence.

“There are bruises and injuries on the body, especially on the face and back. The body was naked from the waist down,” Negi said.

“So far we are considering this to be a criminal act, but we are waiting for the forensic report and the police investigation to be complete.”

An initial prosecution report seen by an AFP reporter said that the injuries included apparent cigarette-burn marks near the eyes and on the feet.

As well as summoning the ambassador, Rome demanded that its own experts be fully involved in a joint investigation into what happened.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Italy expected Egypt to cooperate.

‘Truth must come out’

Speaking to national broadcaster RAI from London, Gentiloni urged Cairo to allow Italian experts to take part in the investigation “because we want the truth to come out, every last bit of it.”

“We owe that much to a family that has been stricken in an irreparable way and, at the very least, has the right to know the truth.”

The foreign ministry also asked for Regeni’s corpse to be repatriated to Italy as soon as possible.

A vehicle belonging to the Italian ambassador is parked outside Zeinhom morgue, where the body of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old graduate student, is held, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

The ministry said the ambassador, Amr Mostafa Kamal Helmy, had given assurances that the Egyptian authorities would do their utmost to find those responsible.

In reaction to the news, Italy’s Economic Development Minister Federica Guidi, who was in Cairo when Regeni’s body was discovered, canceled the final day of a trade mission involving some 60 Italian companies.

She had hours earlier urged Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to intervene personally in the investigation into Regeni’s disappearance, underlining the potential for the case to disrupt normally close ties between Rome and Cairo, according to the Italian media.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was the first Western leader to receive former army chief Sisi after his 2013 overthrow of Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met Gentiloni in London and the two “agreed to increase cooperation and coordination between the Egyptian and Italian sides to determine the cause of the death,” Shoukry’s ministry said in a statement.

Regeni, whose studies included Arabic and Arab literature, was from Fiumicello near Udine in northeastern Italy.

He was in Cairo doing research for his doctoral thesis on trade unions in Egypt and was last seen when he left his home with the intention of travelling by metro to meet a friend in the city center.

Cairo was almost deserted on January 25, as Egyptian authorities had clamped down across the capital on what was the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising that ended longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign.