Missing Student's Body Found Burned, Bruised in Egypt

Body of Italian grad student shows 'signs of torture'
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Feb 4, 2016 9:22 AM CST
Missing Student's Body Found Burned, Bruised in Egypt
People enter Egypt's central morgue in Cairo, where the body of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old graduate student, is held, Feb. 4, 2016.   (Nariman El-Mofty)

The body of a missing Italian student was found with signs of torture, including multiple stab wounds and cigarette burns, by the side of a highway on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital, an investigating prosecutor told the AP on Thursday. Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old grad student, went missing in Cairo on Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Regeni's body was found Wednesday along the Cairo-Alexandria Road in western Cairo and was positively identified by his roommate, said prosecutor Ahmed Nagi. Nagi said the cause of death was still being investigated but noted "all of his body, including his face" had bruises, cuts from stabbings, and burns from cigarettes; he said it appeared to have been a "slow death."

A slightly different story emerges from Alaa Azmi, a head criminal investigator in Cairo's twin province of Giza, who says the body of Regeni—said to be a University of Cambridge student—was found on Wednesday morning with "bruises and cuts." An initial investigation showed it was a road accident, he notes, adding the preliminary forensic report hadn't mentioned any burns. "We have to wait for the full report by forensic experts. But what we know is that it is an accident," he says. An employee at Cairo's central morgue confirmed Regeni's body was brought there. Italy's Foreign Ministry has requested that the body be returned to Italy as soon as possible. (More Egypt stories.)

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