Italy will continue inquiring into Italian researcher Giulio Regeni’s murder, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
“If someone thinks that we will stop demanding the truth in the Regeni murder with the passing of time, they are wrong,” Gentiloni said on Friday in response to questions about a Reuters citing anonymous police sources that confirmed Regeni was detained by Egyptian police prior to his death.
In his briefing on Thursday, US department of state spokesperson John Kirby said that the report raised “questions about the circumstances of [Regeni’s] death that we believe can only be answered through an impartial and a comprehensive inquiry.”
“We continue to call on the Government of Egypt to ensure that the investigation is conducted in a full and transparent manner and to fully collaborate with the Italian officials who we know are part of that investigation,” Kirby added.
Kirby also said that he cannot confirm the truth of the report.
European Parliament Speaker Martin Schulz said Friday that the EU parliamentary body has issued a statement on the case where it asked “Egyptian authorities to prove their transparency and collaborate with the authorities”, according to ANSA.
“Giulio Regeni was an Italian citizen but also a European citizen. And the European Union supports Italy in the search for the truth,” Schulz said Friday.
The Egyptian ministry of interior denied the Reuters report in a statement published on its official Facebook page. “The Ministry of Interior maintains its right to take the legal measures against those who disseminate rumours,” the statement read.
Italy recently recalled its ambassador to Egypt in protest of the consultations over the investigations into Regeni’s death, after a visiting Egyptian delegation in Italy failed to provide the Italian authorities with any substantial findings in the case.
Regeni, who was a Cambridge researcher and a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo, disappeared on 25 January. His body was found on 3 February alongside the Alexandra-Cairo Desert Highway.
Last week during a press conference with the French President François Hollande, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said that Egypt is ready to transparently cooperate with Italian investigators.
