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APNewsBreak: Body of Italian student found outside Cairo

Mr Regeni was found in the ditch on Wednesday.

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There was a heavy police presence in the capital that day because it was the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.

He had been carrying out research towards a PhD focusing on the Egyptian economy.

“The assistant foreign minister asserted during the meeting that the distinguished and special ties between Egypt and Italy oblige Egypt to provide all forms of assistance to the Italian side”, he added. Before Jan. 25, security officials said they had been gathering intelligence for months on young pro-democracy activists and foreigners.

Mr Regeni was found naked from the waist down and seemed to have endured a “slow death”, Mr Nagi included.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said it was cooperating with Rome. And Italy’s Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni demanded that Italy be allowed to participate in the investigation.

In a statement, the ministry said the Italian government was “dismayed” at Regeni’s death and “expects full cooperation from the Egyptian authorities at all levels in view of the exceptional gravity” of the case. His family flew out to Cairo on Wednesday. His body has been taken to a Cairo morgue, a morgue worker and security officials said.

A copy of Regeni’s CV, provided by another friend, indicated he spoke four languages and had won several scholarships. Regeni was not politically active, according to The Telegraph. Many have disappeared since 2013.

El-Sisi vowed that Egyptian authorities will pay “the utmost attention to investigating the incident… and follow up on all the circumstances surrounding it”. An Italian journalist told the press Regeni had been afraid to sign his real name.

Egyptian media have speculated that it may have been a robbery which turned violent. One police source suggested that the killing might have been linked to unspecified events in Mr Regeni’s personal life.

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He was in Cairo doing research for his doctoral thesis and was last seen on January 25 when he left his suburban home with the intention of travelling by metro to meet a friend in the city center.

Giulio Regeni