Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni said his government is ready to undertake immediate and proportional measures against Egypt unless there is a change in the place of the investigations by the Egyptian prosecution in the case of Giulio Regeni.
In a speech he delivered to the Senate on Tuesday, the minister added that his government will not allow Italy’s dignity to be trampled on, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
The preliminary investigations dossier sent to Italy by Egyptian investigators in the beginning of March was lacking, Gentiloni said. It lacked at least two of the five chapters requested by Italian prosecutors, which are information about Regeni’s phone data and CCTV footage from the Cairo Metro, the minister said.
Regarding the Egyptian prosecution’s declaration on Tuesday that a delegation of security members and investigators will fly to Rome on Wednesday morning to provide their Italian counterparts with results of the investigations, Gentiloni said that “important” meetings in Rome with the Egyptian delegation on Thursday and Friday “could be decisive for the development of investigations”.
Gentiloni described Regini’s murder as “a shock” to the whole country “not because the life of an exemplary Italian was cut short, but because of the way in which he was atrociously tortured and killed; and for the lesson in composure by his parents”.
The minister said Italy will not give up until the truth is found, “the real one not the convenient one”, according to ANSA.
He said Italy would not lend credit to “distorted” truths and wants to obtain the missing information.
Regeni, 28, was found dead in a ditch along the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road on 3 February, nine days after his disappearance, amid allegations of possible security involvement due to his research related to Egypt’s labour and connections to workers’ unions and members of the Egyptian opposition.
