The body of a 28-year-old Italian student who had disappeared in Cairo last week and was found dead was repatriated on Saturday to Italy which has launched an investigation into his death.
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The Italian news agency ANSA, citing unidentified sources close to the Italian coroners, said the findings led to the conclusion that Regeni’s neck was twisted or struck, breaking a vertebra and leaving him unable to breathe.
“We’ve asked for and secured complete availability and collaboration of the Egyptian authorities”, said Andrea Orlando, Italian Justice Minister.
Alfano pressed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to ensure cooperation in the investigation, noting that Italian police dispatched to Cairo on Saturday started working with their Egyptian counterparts on the case.
“Giulio was here fighting for the rights of Egyptian workers, and for the Egyptian revolution”.
The officials said an investigation had begun.
According to rights groups, Egyptians are often detained by police on little evidence and beaten.
The Italian Foreign Ministry’s director general, Michele Valensise, “urgently” summoned Egyptian Ambassador Amr Mostafa Kamal Helmy after Regeni’s body was found on Wednesday. He said the group has documented 35 disappearances so far in 2016, including at least two of whom have died.
Aide to Egypt’s justice minister for forensic medicine Shaaban al-Shamy told Aswat Masriya that medical examiners took samples from all of Regeni’s organs as well as a DNA sample, adding that results will be sent to prosecution after their completion.
In Cairo, prosecutors say they are waiting for a full report from the Egyptian autopsy. It was a day when security forces were out in force to stop any protests. “Are there sometimes individual excesses?” Orlando said Italy was calling on Egyptian authorities to act with determination, transparency and rapidity.
Regeni, a Cambridge University doctoral student, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the fifth anniversary of the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
Tensions had been high in Egypt in the run-up to the anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising, with police detaining activists and warning people not to demonstrate.
After the body’s discovery was first revealed, some Egyptian authorities initially attributed Regeni’s death to a road accident.
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Regeni, whose studies included Arabic and Arab literature, was from Fiumicello near Udine in northeastern Italy.
