Egypt to 'temporarily close' probe of Italian student murder

Egypt is to "temporarily close" its investigation into the murder in Cairo of Italian student Guilio Regeni, for which Rome named Egyptian security officials as suspect, the two countries said Monday.

The judiciary services of the two countries, in a joint statement, said the search for the perpetrator of the 2016 murder would carry on, despite "the temporary closure of the investigative file".

The Italian judiciary said it planned to close its probe of five suspects from the Egyptian security services, a file on which the Egyptian side voiced "extreme reservations".

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University doctoral researcher, disappeared in January 2016 in Cairo, where he was carrying out research on Egyptian trades unions.

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His badly mutilated body was found in a suburb of the capital a few days later, bearing the marks of torture.

Amid on-off diplomatic spats between the two countries over the handling of the investigation, multiple theories put forward by Egyptian authorities have been rejected by their Italian counterparts.

Regeni's parents said Monday that they had been "subjected to all kinds of hurt and contempt on the part of Egypt, which kidnapped, tortured and killed our son".

The student's body was found nine days after he had disappeared. His mother later said it had been so badly mutilated she only recognised her son by the "tip of his nose".

Regeni had been researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, a particularly sensitive political issue in Egypt.