The family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year, said Tuesday that they were "anxious" over the arrest in Egypt of a consultant who was helping their legal team. The family named the arrested person as Ahmed Abdallah, president of the board of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedom (ECRF), an NGO that is providing consultancy work for the Regeni's lawyers.
Amnesty International confirmed Abdallah was arrested along with activist Sanaa Seif and lawyer Malek Adly. Egyptian special forces took Abdallah from his home on the night of April 24 and he stands accused of instigation to violence in order to overthrow the government, adhering to a terrorist group, and promotion of terrorism, Amnesty said.
In light of Amnesty's communique, the Regeni family expressed "concern over the recent wave of arrests in Egypt (of) human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, some of them directly engaged in the search for the truth about the abduction, torture and murder of Giulio", their statement said.
Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge doctoral student researching Egyptian trade unions, disappeared on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former strongman Hosni Mubarak. His beaten, burned, slashed, and mutilated body turned up in a ditch on the city's outskirts on February 3.
Italy has complained of a lack of cooperation from Cairo in getting to the bottom of the case and recently recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations after the investigation into Regeni's death stalled, with Egypt proffering unlikely versions of his death that included a car crash, a gay lovers' quarrel, and a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong.
On Monday, which was a national holiday in Italy, Lower House Speaker Laura Boldrini reiterated the call for truth and justice for Regeni.
"We will never tire of calling for the truth. A democracy does not compromise," she said during celebrations to mark Italy's liberation from the Nazi occupation in World War II. Meanwhile in the Egyptian capital, a journalist who interviewed the relatives of the criminal gang allegedly found to be in possession of Regeni's documents was among numerous people detained following anti-government protests coinciding with the anniversary of the end of the Israeli occupation of the Sinai peninsula on Monday. Basma Mostafa was one of six local and six foreign journalists be to detained. Also on Monday, an Egyptian television presenter drew criticism after saying Regeni could 'go to hell'. "What's all the fuss about?" asked Rania Yassin on the Saudi television channel Al Hadath Al Arabiya. "Is it the first time that someone has been killed? Initially we sympathised, a young person had been killed. But now you have pushed us into saying 'go to hell', we've had enough of this story!" Journalists in Cairo said Yassin's remarks were "out of place and not to be publicised".
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
