Kidnapped Cambridge student was tortured for days before he was killed
AN Italian Cambridge University PhD student killed in Cairo was tortured for several days before dying from a broken neck, according to a post-mortem.
Rome prosecutors have opened a murder investigation into the death of Giulio Regeni, whose battered corpse was found outside Cairo nine days after he was reported missing.
As new, disturbing details of Mr Regeni’s last days in Egypt emerge, some of the researcher’s former colleagues are asking the British Government to join Italy’s demand for an independent investigation.
A parliamentary petition requesting a formal statement from the British government has been drafted and will circulate in coming days, said Neil Pyper, from Coventry University’s school of strategy and leadership.
Mr Regeni’s parents arrived in Rome on Saturday with their son’s body, which underwent a second autopsy on in Rome following the one performed in Cairo. According to the Italian news agency ANSA, coroners are still trying to establish whether the fatal neck injury was due to a severe blow or contortion.
Mr Regeni’s body had more than two dozen broken bones, as well as bruises and burn marks. “There is no doubt that the young man was heavily beaten and tortured,” Maurizio Massari, Italy’s ambassador to Cairo, said.
A funeral is planned for early next week in the 28-year-old’s native Italian region of Friuli. He had been living in Cairo to do research as a candidate for a Cambridge University doctorate when he disappeared on January 25, the anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, a day when security forces were heavily patrolling the streets and squares. “It happened to Giulio, but it could have been me or my friends who have been to Egypt frequently,” said Alessandro Columbu, an Italian doctoral student who teaches Arabic at the University of Edinburgh.
Mr Columbu, who studied with Mr Regeni in Damascus, told The Daily Tel
egraph he was concerned there could be a cover up of the circumstances surrounding Mr Regeni’s death, especially given Italy’s recent embrace of Egypt as an economic partner and ally in the fight against terrorism.