In front of the Human Rights Council .. The Italian Foreign Minister calls on Cairo to hold accountable Regeni's murderers and to release Zaki

During the meetings of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio called on the Egyptian authorities to release the activist, Patrick Zaki, and hold accountable the killers of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni.

Today, Wednesday, in his speech to the 46th session of the Council, which is being held via video in light of the Corona pandemic, Di Maio said, “Allow me to express my deep concern about the critical situation of human rights defenders and activists in various regions of the world. I would like to refer to Patrick Zaki. The young student, who is still unjustly detained in Egypt. We call on the Egyptian authorities to release him. "

He continued, "We also ask them to shed light and provide the truth about the circumstances of the brutal killing of the Italian citizen Giulio Regeni, and to bring those responsible for that crime to justice."

The Italian minister called on the Egyptian government to "guarantee full respect for the rights and freedoms stipulated in its constitution, and to address all cases of disappearances."

The Egyptian authorities had arrested the activist and researcher at the University of Bologna, Italy, Patrick Zaki, while he was returning from Italy to spend a holiday in Egypt in February of last year, and his lawyers said that he was tortured, electrocuted and beaten at the National Security headquarters.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio (European - Archive)

At the end of 2020, the Egyptian prosecution announced the closure of the Regeni case and the failure to initiate a criminal case, but Rome strongly rejected that, and said that it would continue to seek in international forums to uncover the circumstances of his death and punish the perpetrators.

The prosecution in Rome had announced that it had collected conclusive and sufficient evidence, after almost 5 years of investigations, to file an indictment against 4 officers of the Egyptian National Security Agency, including charges of premeditated murder of Regeni.

However, the Egyptian authorities denied the involvement of the National Security Agency, and said that the Italian researcher was killed by a criminal gang that wanted to steal him, and that all of its members were killed during a security operation.

Regeni, a 26-year-old graduate student at the University of Cambridge, who was conducting a PhD research in Cairo, disappeared for 9 days, after which his body was found with signs of torture on February 3, 2016.