Italy on Friday recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations in protest over the lack of progress in a probe into the fate of murdered Cambridge student Giulio Regeni. The move came after two days of talks between Egyptian and Italian investigators in Rome ended without a resolution of tensions between the two countries over the fate of 28-year-old Regeni, whose tortured and mutilated body was discovered outside Cairo on February 3.
"We want only one thing, the truth about what happened to Giulio," Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in a tweet. A statement by the Rome prosecutor in charge of the case said that the Egyptians had handed over phone records of two of Regeni's Italian friends who were in Cairo at the time of his disappearance, as well as photos taken on the day his body was discovered.
The statement made no mention of CCTV footage of the neighbourhood from which Regeni disappeared on January 25, which the Italians had asked to see, or whether Regeni was under surveillance prior to his abduction. The Egyptian team indicated that they were still considering the possibility Regeni was abducted by an anti-foreigner criminal gang whose members all died in a police shootout last month.
The Italian prosecutor "reiterated his conviction that there are no elements to directly link the gang to the torture and death of Giulio Regeni," the statement said. Egypt's presentation of the criminal gang theory has been greeted with outraged scepticism in Italy and has helped fuel public anger over the case, putting intense pressure on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to be seen to be getting tough with Cairo.