Giulio Regeni's Cambridge tutor
will be questioned in a probe into the torture and murder of he
doctoral student in Cairo early last year, Foreign Minister
Angelino Alfano said Wednesday.
"The British judge has accepted the European investigation
warrant and that the Cambridge professor can be questioned," he
said after meeting British counterpart Boris Johnson earlier
today.
Alfano called it a "significant development, a significant
step forward".
The lecturer, Maha Mahfouz Abdel Rahman, will be questioned
by Rome prosecutors in January, the prosecutor's office in Rome
said.
The Cambridge police are identifying and questioning students
who went to Egypt to do research or study before Regeni, the
office said.
The office confirmed that British authorities were providing
the utmost collaboration with the porbe.
Regeni's former Cambridge tutor Abdelrahman failed to meet a
summons to appear before Italian prosecutors in June, sources
said last month.
The encounter at a Cambridge police station was first set for
9.00 on June 7, then postponed to 16:00 on the same day, and
then to June 8, but the professor did not turn up, the sources
said on November 3.
After the report, a Cambridge University spokesperson told
ANSA that Abdelrahman "has repeatedly expressed her willingness
to fully cooperate with the Italian prosecutors".
Rome prosecutors sent a new formal petition to the British
authorities in October to be able to question Abdelrahman La
Repubblica said.
The Rome-based daily reported that the prosecutors also want
to acquire the professor's mobile and fixed-line phone records
from between January 2015 and February 28 2016 to reconstruct
her network of relations.
The move regards alleged ambiguity and omissions by the woman
in relation to the probe into the torture and murder of the
28-year-old Italian post-graduate student in Egypt early last
year, La Repubblica wrote in an article entitled 'The Lies of
Cambridge'.
Rome prosecutors reportedly want clarification on several
aspects of the case, the newspaper said.
These regard how the subject of Regeni's research on street
trader unions was chosen, the selection of his tutor in Egypt,
the research method used, who decided what questions to ask the
traders and whether Regeni gave the results of his research to
Professor Abdelrahman during a meeting in Cairo on January 7,
2016.
Rome prosecutors have also asked the British judicial
authorities to identify all of the Cambridge University students
working under Abdelrahman who were sent to Cairo between 2012
and 2015, sources said on Thursday.
The petition requests that those students be questioned in
the presence of Italian investigators.
The investigators want to know whether there were other cases
like Regeni's in which students were asked to research the
independent unions in Egypt.
Regeni was asked to look into this by his tutor even though
his PhD regarded the general subject of the North African
nation's economic development.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said earlier this
month that Egypt would give Italian prosecutors CCTV
footage from the metro the day Regeni disappeared.
"As soon as the European company we have tasked with
recovering the images shot by the Cairo underground cameras has
done so, our commitment will be to provide them to Italian
investigators," he said.
Shoukry added, however, that a final decision was down to the
"prosecutor who is independent and will decide on the merits of
the case".
In November Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi said he
wants to "find those guilty" for the death of Friuli-born
Regeni.
El-Sisi said he believes the murder was an attempt to
frustrate Italian investment in Egypt.
"We are working in a very transparent way with the Italian
authorities," he said.
El-Sisi said Italian-Egyptian relations are among the best,
despite the fact that they were hit hard by the Regeni case.
Egypt has previously given several explanations for Regeni's
death including a car accident, a gay lovers' tiff turned ugly
and murder by an alleged kidnapping gang, later wiped out by
police - all of them rejected by Italy.
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