Italy will do all it can to shed light on Giulio Regeni murder and to bring his killers to justice, head of state Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday told the family of the student slain in Egypt.
Mattarella made the vow during a private meeting at the Quirinale palace with Regeni's parents Paola and Claudio and his sister Irene, during which he voiced his and Italy's solidarity with them, sources said.
Earlier on Wednesday, a well-placed source at the Giza prosecutors office denied local media reports they were intending to shelve the investigation into Regeni's murder, which allegedly occurred last month.
"These reports are untrue, these sites just write what they want to. At present there are no new leads to report in the investigation," the sources told Adnkronos International (AKI).
"When we have some new information we will announce it."
Regeni died a day before his battered body was found in a ditch outside Cairo on 3 February and he was tortured shortly before his death, Giza's chief prosecutor Hossam Nassar said on Tuesday.
Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, vanished in Cairo on 25 January, the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising which ended autocrat Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.
Police had been deployed across Cairo on that date to prevent demonstrations amid an unprecedented crackdown by Egypt's government on dissent.
Regeni had been researching trade union activism in Egypt - a sensitive topic - and had published articles critical of the government and the lack of democracy in the country.
Cairo has rejected suspicions by many in Italy and elsewhere that Egyptian security forces were responsible for killing Regeni. It has said criminal motives, 'revenge' or terrorism could lie behind the murder but has so far made no arrests in the case.
It has also said Regeni was not a spy and denied he was arrested before he disappeared, as some eyewitnesses reportedly claimed.
The Egyptian government has pledged to find Regeni's killers and claims it is cooperating fully with a team of Italian police investigators sent to Cairo last month.
