An Egyptian delegation of two magistrates and four security officials met with Italian officials in Rome on Thursday, with the aim of reviewing investigations into the murder of Italian PhD student Guilio Regeni.
According to Italian news agency ANSA, the Egyptian officials submitted a 2,000-page case report, including interviews with 200 witnesses with alleged connections to the victim.
ANSA mentioned that the Egyptian delegation was headed by Cairo Adjunct Chief Prosecutor Mostafa Soliman, while Rome Prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone led the Italian officials in the meeting.
The 28-year-old Italian PhD student from Cambridge University disappeared on January 25, the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising that ended the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
Ten days after Regeni's disappearance, his body was found alongside the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, bearing the signs of torture.
In March, Egypt’s Interior Ministry claimed to have discovered items belonging to Regeni in an apartment linked to a gang of thieves. Security forces conducted a raid on the gang, killing four gang members in a shootout, according to the ministry.
In a statement, the ministry said that the gang specialized in “impersonating policemen, kidnapping foreigners and stealing their money.”
Italian investigators, however, expressed their suspicion over Egypt’s claims and said that the case is “far from closed,” reported Italian news agency ANSA.
Citing the investigators, ANSA pointed to “inconsistencies” in Egypt’s version of the story,saying it was “unlikely” that the alleged kidnappers would hold onto items such as Regeni's passport for so long, bearing in mind that it would incriminate them in the murder.
The news agency also said it was “unlikely” that the gang would have tortured the PhD student for over a week.
In a statement on Wednesday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expressed the "deep regret" of Egypt (both of officials and the general public) over the killing of the student.
Sisi stressed Egypt's intention to continue cooperating with the Italian authorities in complete transparency to discover the circumstances surrounding the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
He expressed his confidence that the incident will be addressed judiciously and that longstanding warm relations between Italy and Egypt will not be affected by exceptional incidents such as this.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid also said on Wednesday that Egypt declines to comment on the statement of Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Tuesday.
In the strongly-worded statement directed at Egypt, Gentiloni vowed that instant action would be taken against Cairo if it did not disclose the truth behind the killing of the Italian student.
"We will not allow the dignity of our country to be trampled, we will not accept distorted facts, and the government is ready to take action," Gentiloni said to the Italian senate on Tuesday.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry takes the stance that Geniloni's heated statements further complicate the situation.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid pointed out that the Gentiloni's statement came one day before a scheduled meeting between Egyptian investigators and authorities in Italy to share the latest results of investigations.
According to an earlier statement issued by the chief prosecutor's office, the delegation's visit comes within the framework of positive cooperation between the Egyptian and Italian top prosecutor generals — the result of an agreement between the two officials during the chief Italian prosecutor's visit to Cairo following the murder.
