The Ministry of Interior impugned the veracity of reports that have detailed the circumstances of the death of Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni, whose body was found in a ditch along the Cairo-Alexandria Dessert Road highway on 3 February.
“The information circulated currently is mere assumption,” ministry spokesman Abu Bakr Abdel Karim said in a phone interview on Dream TV on Saturday. Investigators in the case have shared information with the Italian police delegate that arrived in Cairo on Friday to take part in the investigations.
In preliminary interviews conducted by the Egyptian prosecutor’s office and detailed in a report Saturday, Regeni’s acquaintances claimed that he had not taken part in any activities that would endanger his life nor did they did know of anyone who held any animosity towards him.
A South Giza prosecution unit reported that the coroner’s report indicated that Regeni’s body bore signs of torture but the cause of death is still unknown.
Officials from the Ministry of Justice joined the Ministry of Interior in refuting initial media reports and that the prosecution’s investigation should be the authority in the case.
Regeni, 28, was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge in the UK and had come to Cairo as a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo (AUC) to research Egyptian labour unions. He was reported missing on the fifth anniversary of the 25 January Revolution. He was last known to be travelling to Downtown Cairo via the Behouth metro station.
