The furor surrounding the death of an Italian student, whose body was discovered on Wednesday on an Egyptian roadside, grew on Friday as Italian investigators flew to Cairo to help find his killers, and it emerged that the young man had secretly written from Egypt for a left-wing Italian newspaper.
The newspaper, Il Manifesto, published an article on Friday that the Italian student, Giulio Regeni, 28, had written under a pseudonym weeks before he was found dead that was sharply critical of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, while describing faltering attempts by Egyptian unions to organize.
There was no indication that Regeni’s writing led to his death, but the article contributed to the broader Italian outrage over Regeni’s injuries, as news outlets pointed an accusatory finger at the Egyptian security forces.
Egyptian officials in Thursday said that Regeni had been tortured extensively and probably died from a brain hemorrhage.
“Giulio, Egyptian police under accusation,” read the headline of La Stampa, a Turin-based daily newspaper.
Hoping to defuse a potentially damaging crisis with a relatively close European ally, Egyptian officials promised cooperation and vowed to find Regeni’s killers. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi spoke with al-Sisi by telephone and both agreed to cooperate to “unravel the mystery,” al-Sisi’s office said in a statement.
Italian officials had strenuously urged Egypt to allow a joint investigation into the killing, and on Friday evening, a team of Italian and Interpol investigators was scheduled to land in Cairo, officials from both nations said.
Egyptian ambassador to Rome Amr Helmy said it was proof of the two nations’ “mutual desire to identify the culprits who committed this criminal shameful act.”
However, before the Italians investigators had landed, Egyptian investigators claimed to have made a breakthrough in the case that, to critics, raised the specter of a cover-up.
Having determined that Regeni’s killing was a “criminal and not a terrorist act,” an Egyptian Ministry of the Interior official said the authorities had arrested and were investigating two suspects in Giza.
Regeni, a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University, arrived in Egypt in September last year to conduct field research into Egypt’s labor movement, particu
That is a sensitive subject in a nation where disgruntled workers helped oust former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Regeni’s academic supervisors said that he took care not to get into trouble with his research, although he wrote on the side for Il Manifesto.
He used a pseudonym because he worried about the “general atmosphere of repression” since al-Sisi came to power in 2013, Giuseppe Acconcia, a journalist at the paper, said in an e-mail.
Acconcia said that, in recent weeks, Regeni had expressed concern about the harsh government-led crackdown before the Jan. 25 anniversary of an uprising that ultimately ousted Mubarak, but did not report specific threats to himself.
However, it turned out that Jan. 25 was the day when Regeni disappeared, shortly after he left his apartment to meet a fellow Italian near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Who took him and why are the central questions facing investigators.
In recent years, Muslim militants have been responsible for the deaths of many foreigners in Egypt, most recently in the suspected bomb attack that downed a Russian jetliner in October last year, killing 224 people.
However, in Regeni’s case, the strongest suspicions have focused on the security forces, because the circumstances of his disappearance match those of many Egyptians who have vanished into secretive detention facilities, run by the security forces, where torture is common.
Most eventually appear in court or jail, but some have been found dead.
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