The phone records of 13 Egyptian citizens that were requested by Italian prosecutors over the murder of Italian PhD candidate Guilio Regeni were sent to Italy on Wednesday by Egyptian prosecutor Ahmed Sadek, according to Italy’s official news agency ANSA.
The agency cited anonymous sources as saying that a new meeting in the Regeni case will take place in Cairo within the coming days.
Italian prosecutors are looking to investigate phone calls made in the area where Regeni disappeared.
Earlier this month, assistant public prosecutor Mostafa Suleiman said in a press conference that Egypt refused to send any phone records requested by Italy because such an act is considered “unconstitutional”.
During the last meeting between Egyptian and Italian officials in Rome, the Italian side requested the phone records of 13 Egyptian citizens as part of the investigations.
Regeni, who was a Cambridge researcher and a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo (AUC), disappeared on 25 January, the fifth anniversary of the 2011 revolution. His body was found on 3 February alongside the Alexandra-Cairo Desert Highway.
A recent memo from the Ministry of Interior, which was mistakenly sent to journalists, revealed that the ministry had suggested a media gag on the Regeni case.
The memo contained the ministry’s plans to handle the media, in particular regarding the current conflict between the ministry and Press Syndicate.
Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that Italy asked Egypt for “serious cooperation in the probe” into the Regeni case.
“But frankly I want to see results before being optimistic,” Gentiloni told CNN.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian was found dead on a railway track in Naples, bearing marks that suggested he had been struck on the head.
Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zaid said Wednesday that the Egyptian embassy in Rome will file a request for an immediate briefing of the forensics report and the preliminary investigations.
Abou Zaid told a local TV station that embassies abroad receive hundreds of reports about assaults against Egyptians “but the media was not spotlighting them before the murder of the Italian student Giulio Regeni”.
