Egypt wants to identify and bring to justice the killers of slain Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni, the country's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday, according to a statement from the presidential spokesman.
"There exists strong political will to obtain justice over the murder of the young Italian researcher Giulio Regeni," presidential spokesman Bassam Radi stated after a meeting between Sisi and Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini in Cairo.
Egypt wants "to identify those responsible for the murder with full coordination between the two countries' authorities," said the statement.
Salvini "praised the cooperation of the Egyptian authorities in the search for the truth and the authors of this crime," during his visit, the statement claimed.
Italy is organising an international conference on the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration, the statement cited Salvini as saying.
During his talks with Sisi, Salvini renewed Italy's appeal to Egypt to solve the brutal killing of 28-year-old Regeni, whose mutilated body was found outside Cairo, nine days after he vanished from the capital on 25 January 2016. He had been tortured to death and dumped in a ditch.
The Egyptian government denies any state involvement in Regeni's murder despite widespread suspicion among western diplomats and in the Italian press that Egypt's security forces were behind his slaying.
