Killing of Italian scholar creates tensions and uncertainty
CAIRO, Egypt — As forensic investigators in Rome determined that Giulio Regeni, the 28-year old student found dead in Cairo last week was killed by a violent blow to the base of his head, Egyptian authorities beat back accusations that officials of the President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi government were to blame for the activist’s death.
“The notion being put out there by some that Mr. Regeni’s death was caused by Egypt’s security services amounts to baseless and harmful speculation and reflects either a bias or ill-will,” a foreign ministry spokesman told The Media Line.
A graduate student from Britain’s Cambridge University studying Egyptian labor movements, Regeni disappeared on January 25 — the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising that led to the downfall of ex-President Hosni Mubarak. Most Egyptians marked day by staying home after receiving clear signals from the presidency that security forces would not tolerate public protests. His body was found on February 3.
“We take any harm suffered by foreign nationals here extremely seriously,” said the spokesman, who under Egyptian protocols demanded to remain unnamed. “But sadly, tragic incidents can happen anywhere, and attempting to exploit them for political purposes is in poor taste.”
ACCUSATIONS and INVESTIGATION
Academics and human rights activists attempting to paint the Egyptian government as culpable in Regeni’s death were aiming to disrupt the long-standing and fruitful security and economic partnership between Rome and Cairo, the spokesman said.
Egypt and Italy are coordinating closely both in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya and to stem the flow of refugees from North Africa into Europe. Last summer, the Italian energy group Eni discovered one of the world’s largest natural gas fields off the Egyptian coast.
Italy’s interior minister said Sunday that a second autopsy showed Regeni suffered “inhuman, animal-like” violence. The coroner concluded that his neck was twisted or struck, breaking a vertebra and suffocating him as he couldn’t breathe.
Last year, a Croatian engineer for a French energy firm was abducted in the same 6 October City area and later ISIS posted a video of the man’s beheading. The group told all foreigners that they should leave Egypt last February and the October bombing of a Russian charter jet effectively killed the country’s tourist industry.
Egyptian media have quoted police sources as saying investigators are tracking calls made from his mobile phone records to try and identify his assailants and that two suspects have been detained for questioning.
Regeni had told friends he was traveling between the center city neighborhoods of Dokki and Bab El Look.
KNOCK-ON EFFECT IN WASHINGTON
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry arrived in Washington on Sunday as United States-based academic groups and human rights organizations claimed that Regeni, a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo, was likely tortured to death because he was a critic of President Al-Sissi.
“Regeni’s murder, far from an aberration, is in fact a predictable outcome of the progression of state repression of academics and students,” said Beth Baron, a professor at New York’s City University and president of the Middle East Studies Association, a United States-based group of international scholars.
The association issued a letter Friday addressed to Sissi and Shoukry condemning their regime’s treatment of academics who criticize the government.
“The climate of repression and intimidation in which our colleagues in Egypt — Egyptian and non-Egyptian — have tried to persevere in conducting their academic work has only continued to deteriorate,” the letter said. “Indeed, Regeni’s murder, far from an aberration, is in fact a predictable outcome of the progression of state repression of academics and students.”
Egypt and the US resumed a strategic dialogue in August largely focused on fighting the Islamic State in the region but Washington has remained critical of Cairo’s restrained “roadmap to democracy” and human rights record.
Egyptian security forces “disappeared” 314 people last year, according to the Egyptian Association for Rights and Freedoms. At least five of those cases involved missing people found dead, often bearing signs of torture.
The perception that Egypt’s security services has violently overreached its anti-terror mandate is likely to slow progress of efforts to coordinate Syria, Libya, and Israeli-Palestinian matters during Shoukry’s talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Congressional Armed Services and Intelligence committees, and, National Security Adviser Susan Rice
LAST WORDS
The return of Regeni’s body to Italy followed a gathering of activists and academics who left memorial wreathes and lit candles at the Italian Embassy in Cairo on Saturday.
“Giulio was part of this movement and a comrade,” psychiatrist Sally Toma told The Media Line.
“He was a human rights defender and, since he was here to defend the rights of labor and Egyptians, then the least we Egyptians can do is fight for the truth of how he was killed.”
On Friday, Il Manifesto, an Italian communist newspaper published Regeni’s last news report — he contributed frequently to the newspaper — that criticized Sissi and the security services’ treatment of independent workers’ groups, or trade unions not associated with the government.
A lawyer for the Regeni family said the newspaper did not respect their request to withhold publication of the article.
In his final paragraph, Regeni wrote that the unions’ defiance of the state of emergency and the regime’s appeals for stability signaled “a bold questioning of the underlying rhetoric the regime uses to justify its own existence.”
Italian media have reported that Italian officials believe Egyptian security services interrogated Regeni to learn more about his contacts with the activists. Egyptian officials have denied those claims.
“Please stay away from this country that’s plagued by death and horror…until we manage somehow to regain a common safe space for everyone, those who are living here and others visiting from abroad,” said activist Mona Seif, the sister of Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of Egypt’s best-known political prisoners.