In Egypt, an Italian student stirred suspicion before he died

CAMBRIDGE (Reuters) – Ten days before he vanished, Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni made a Skype call from his Cairo apartment to an academic in Germany.

It was the middle of January and Egyptian police were braced for political protests ahead of the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Regeni sounded anxious. “We did not talk very much as it was expected that we will catch up at some point later,” said Georgeta Auktor, a researcher at the German Development Institute in Bonn, where Regeni had spent a few weeks in 2015. “He said he feels he needs to be careful where he goes in the city and whom he meets.” They did not speak again. Regeni’s body was found on the side of the Cairo-Alexandria highway on February 3 by passengers on a bus that had broken down, according to a police source. Egyptian forensics officials said the body showed signs of torture, including cigarette burns and beatings.

Regeni’s mother, Paola, later told Italy’s parliament that her son’s injuries were so bad she identified him only by the tip of his nose. Egyptian human rights groups said the torture suggested Egyptian security services had killed the student, allegations those services and the government have strongly denied.

In April, intelligence and security sources told Reuters that police had arrested Regeni outside a Cairo metro station on January 25 and then transferred him to a compound run by Homeland Security. The government and security services deny he was ever in custody.

It remains unclear who killed Regeni or why. But piecing together his activity in the months leading up to his death, it is apparent that two factors put the student at risk: his passionate interest in political and economic issues and his belief that Egypt needed change. Three Egyptian security sources have told Reuters that Regeni raised the suspicions of Egypt’s security services because he met unionists and was researching politically sensitive subjects.

“Homeland Security had monitored Regeni with a number of opposition leaders and labor unions. He attended several meetings,” one of the sources said.

A second security source said: “He is a foreigner and does not work in the media... and this is what made Homeland Security follow and monitor him.”

A third security source said that Regeni’s meetings were suspicious because they took place at “a time in which many nations were intervening in what is happening in Egypt.” This, he said, raised the possibility that the Italian was gathering information for a foreign nation.

But other Egyptian security officials said that even if agents were watching Regeni’s activities they played no role in his death.

Two Egyptian officials – one in security, one in government – said that if security services had suspected Regeni was a spy he would simply have been deported.

A Western ambassador said that may have been true in the past, but no longer. “That is what happened in the Cold War. This is Egypt under Sisi. They are very suspicious,” he said, referring to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army general who is now Egypt’s president.

Regeni, who was 28, had been researching Egypt’s independent unions for his doctoral thesis. Associates say he was also interested in alternatives to the long-standing domination by the state and the military of Egypt’s economy.

But the government of Sisi, the one-time head of military intelligence who seized power from Morsi, is wary of unions, regularly breaking up strikes and arresting laborers.

Though many independent trade unions emerged after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, they have been fragmented since Sisi took control. Human Rights Watch, a lobby group, has criticized Sisi’s government, saying it had stopped “dealing with the de facto independent trade unions, which has led labor activists to fear that labor rights gains since 2011 are facing erosion.”

By late last year, Egypt was in a state of paranoia. The government made protesting without permission a crime, and the number of people arrested on political grounds reached 40,000, according to human rights groups. Those groups say state torture is widespread, an allegation the government denies.

Before conducting research abroad, Cambridge University students complete a rigorous risk assessment with their thesis advisers, according to academics. Regeni had agreed to avoid interaction with political activists, according to associates. He decided to focus on the street vendors’ union, which he thought would be less controversial because it is not politically active like other unions. He also planned to interview Egyptian labor ministry officials, to show balance.

Regeni was not the only academic from Cambridge hoping for change in Egypt. In early November, a few weeks after he left for Cairo, a small group of people gathered in London to protest against an upcoming visit by Sisi. Abdel Rahman was not at the rally, but fellow Cambridge academic and activist Anne Alexander was.

In a speech captured on video and now posted on YouTube, Alexander said: “I think we have sent a clear message tonight but we need to say it louder and more urgently. We need to make sure that Abdel Fattah al-Sisi cannot go around the world pretending that he is a statesman. He is not a statesman. He is a killer. He is not just a killer, he should be a pariah.”

In the crowd, people held up posters backing the Muslim Brotherhood, which Sisi has banned. He describes it as a terrorist group and an existential threat to Egypt.

One union leader said security services may have been interested in Regeni because “he was looking into workers’ unions, not actors or footballers.”

A leader of the street vendors’ union told Reuters that the head of its West Cairo branch, Muhammad Abdallah, had asked Regeni to buy Abdallah a mobile phone and overseas flights. Regeni refused. After that, Khalil said, the Italian began to limit his contact with the union.

Abdallah said he liked Regeni but now regrets associating with him. After the Italian turned up dead, Abdallah said he was questioned by Egyptian authorities several times, including by the Interior Ministry’s Homeland Security Agency. Italian investigators have also spoken with him.

“They asked me the same questions that everybody had asked me since this all happened. When and where have I met him,” said Abdallah. “I didn’t meet him in any hidden place. It was all in the market.”

Two Homeland Security sources said Abdallah frequently visited one of the main security compounds in central Cairo. He had also met with a Homeland Security officer six months before Regeni’s death, they said.

“I am not sure if he was cooperating with security or not. But he was monitored for sure,” one of the sources told Reuters.