Italy demands justice for student slain in Egypt

An outraged Italy demanded on Monday that Egypt catch and punish those responsible for the death of student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured, half-naked corpse was found in a roadside ditch in Cairo last week.

Regeni, a 28-year-old graduate student at Britain's Cambridge University, was researching independent trade unions in Egypt and wrote articles critical of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi's government.

The incident has strained ties between Rome and Cairo, which has made no arrests so far.

"We want the real perpetrators to be discovered and punished according to the law," Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told La Repubblica newspaper on Monday. He said Italy "will not be satisfied with suppositions" to explain the death.

Cambridge University said it wrote to Egyptian authorities to demand a full investigation into Regeni's death.

An initial autopsy in Egypt showed Regeni was burned with cigarettes, hit on the back of the head with a sharp instrument and beaten, according to a senior official at the Cairo public prosecutor's office and a forensic doctor. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

A second autopsy in Italy "confronted us with something inhuman, something animal," Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told Sky News 24 television on Sunday. "It was like a punch in the stomach, and we haven't quite got our breath back yet."

Italian media said the second autopsy ascertained that Regeni's neck was broken. That has not been officially confirmed.

Italian opposition parties have demanded that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government take a tougher stand with Egypt. "The death of Giulio Regeni, who was tortured to death, is still opaque and shrouded in shadows," said the opposition Five Star party. "We demand the truth."

On Sunday night, some 2,000 people held a candlelit march in Fiumicello, Regeni's hometown in northeastern Italy. "We want a commitment at every level to shed light on what happened to Giulio," Mayor Ennio Scridel told the mourners.

Italy has sent members of its special operations police force to Cairo to participate in the investigation.

Tensions were high in Egypt at the time of Regeni's disappearance, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of an uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Rights groups say that police often detain Egyptians on scanty evidence and that they are beaten or coerced. Scores have disappeared since 2013, the groups say. Egypt denies allegations of police brutality.

The left-wing Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, which published Regeni's articles, said he used a pseudonym because he feared for his safety. He did not mention specific threats.

Wire services