Demo on Regeni turns violent in Trieste

(ANSA) - Trieste, October 11 - Demonstrators clashed with police late on Monday during a city council meeting Trieste in north-eastern Italy as they protest against the removal from the facade of city hall of a banner commemorating murdered PhD student Giulio Regeni.
    Hundreds of demonstrators took part in the protest in the city's central Piazza d'Italia square, which was organized by Amnesty International after Mayor Riccardo Dipiazza last week decided to remove the banner demanding the truth about the murder in Egypt - ''Verità per Giulio Regeni'' (truth for Giulio Regeni).
    A small group of protesters who were inside council chambers clashed with municipal police and were forced to leave the room.
    The Italian Cambridge graduate student, 28, born in the town of Fiumicello in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region around Trieste, went missing on the night of January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled former strongman Hosni Mubarak.
    His burned, mutilated, and partially unclothed body turned up in a ditch on the road to Alexandria on February 3.
    Rights groups including Amnesty have said he is among hundreds of people who have disappeared in Egypt over the past year.
    Cairo has repeatedly denied the allegations elements of the Egyptian state were behind the murder, offering a series of explanations ranging from a car crash, to a gay lovers' quarrel gone wrong, to a kidnap for ransom.