The Egyptian Tourism Ministry hosted a church memorial for Giulio Regeni, an Italian graduate student whose body was found with signs of torture a week after he vanished while in Cairo on January 25, the anniversary of the 2011 uprising.
“We are extremely keen to get to the bottom of what had happened to him,” Tourism Minister Hesham Zazou said during the service, that was attended by some 15 people who appeared mostly to be government employees.
Zazou presented his condolences to Regeni’s family “on behalf of – not only the tourism sector – but on behalf of the Egyptian people as well as the government.”
Egypt’s critically important tourism sector has been hard hit by a series of Islamist terror attacks aimed at the visiting foreigners. The murder of Regeni, 29, a Cambridge doctoral student carrying out research on organized labor, including street vendors and independent trade unions, has provoked a crisis between Italy and Egypt.
Regeni told friends he feared he was under surveillance after someone took his picture at a labor meeting.
Italian state TV said Italian investigators were told by a witness that two men — apparently plainclothes police — stopped Regeni and escorted him away as he left his apartment on Jan. 25.