Regeni optimism doesn't mean all OK - Tajani

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 23 - Optimism that Egypt may start helping Italy to find the murderers of Italian student Giulio Regeni does not mean that everything in bilateral relations is OK, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said after being accused of spurring false hopes by saying his talks with President Abdel Fattah e-Sisi had been positive on the student tortured to death in Cairo in early 2016.
    Tajani said after meeting Sisi in the Egyptian capital Sunday that he had been "reassured on the case of Regeni, for whose murder Rome prosecutors are seeking four Egyptian intelligence officers.
    Regeni's parents dismissed this optimism in an interview with Rome daily la Repubblica Monday saying that Cairo's collaboration in notifying the officers of their indictment, and thus allowing a trial in absentia to proceed, had been and continued to be "non-existent".
    The four officers are National Security General Tariq Sabir and his subordinates, Colonels Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim and Uhsam Helmi, and Major Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif.
    The Italian justice ministry said last month that it has had no response from Egypt over its calls for cooperation in the case of the four Egyptian intelligence officers suspected of Regeni's abduction, torture and murder.
    The trial against the four has been suspended after a Rome court ruled that it could not go ahead because the defendants had not been notified of its existence.
    Italy has been trying to notify the four officers of their indictments in order to proceed with their trial in absentia but the efforts ran into a brick wall last year after Cairo refused to help locate them.
    Regeni, a Cambridge University doctoral researcher, was tortured to death while in Egypt to work on research into Cairo street hawkers' unions. His mother only recognised his body by the tip of his nose.
    A fresh hearing in the case has been set for February 13 in Rome.
    Tajani said Monday that Sisi had shown a new willingness to collaborate on the case.
    In Egypt "we raised the issue of Regeni because we need to know and to hit those who murdered this boy. I put the problem to the President of the Egyptian Republic and to the Foreign Minister, and the President was the first to raise the issue by saying that he will do everything to remove the obstacles that have made relations between Italy and his country difficult. I want to be optimistic, but that does not mean that everything is OK.
    We will continue to monitor but it seems to me that I have seen a new and different willingness compared to the past", Tajani said on Radio 24. (ANSA).