Italian student Giulio Regeni was murdered in a central Cairo apartment and his body was dumped on the western outskirts of the Egyptian capital, investigators from Giza's security directorate were cited as telling private daily Al-Masry Al-Youm on Wednesday.
The paper said detectives listened to records of Regeni's final calls on his cell phone before he vanished in Cairo on 25 January after leaving his flat in an upscale suburb of the city to take the underground downtown to meet a friend.
Al-Masry al-Youm quoted investigators as saying 37 suspects had been detained in relation to the murder, including some with criminal backgrounds. Detectives did not find any of Regeni's personal possessions, including his laptop, research documents or clothes at his Cairo flat. These had been removed and taken back to Italy by Regeni's parents aboard a flight, the paper reported.
A taxi driver reportedly found the 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student's battered, half-naked body on 3 February in a ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road. Autopsies carried out on Regeni concluded he had been tortured to death and said he died from a broken neck.
Following an initial autopsy performed in Egypt, a second autopsy conducted in Italy revealed that he was tortured for days and subjected to "something inhuman, something animal,” Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano told Sky News 24 on Sunday.
Regeni went missing on the fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted long time president Hosni Mubarak amid an unprecedented security crackdown.
It has emerged that Regeni had been researching independent trade unions and labour unrest in Egypt - a sensitive topic in recent years - and had written articles critical of president and former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government.
Italian officials strongly suspect Egypt's security forces are implicated in Regeni's abduction, torture and murder but Egypt's government has vehemently denied this and blames 'criminals' for his killing.
Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday, in response to an open letter by over 4,600 international academics condemning the killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni, that it was "premature" to draw conclusions on his death.
The foreign ministry rejected "distorted" claims made in the letter regarding arbitrary arrests, torture and disappearances in Egypt.
The ministry alleged such claims were being spread by "those striving to regain a foothold in Egypt after being rejected by the people" - an apparent reference to the ousted Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Egypt's authorities are committed to hold those convicted of torture to justice, while stressing that these are "individual incidents," the foreign ministry stated.
The academics' open letter demanded an investigation not only of Regeni's killing but of "all instances of forced disappearances, cases of torture and deaths in detention during January and February 2016".
The number of forced disappearances has risen sharply in Egypt over the past year, coinciding with the state's growing intolerance of any form of political opposition or dissent, according to rights groups.
National human rights groups are reporting an average of three people disappearing across Egypt every day, according to Amnesty International.
Regeni's murder has strained ties between Egypt and Italy, which has demanded Egypt's maximum cooperation in a full investigation of the murder to establish the truth and bring those responsible to justice.
Sisi last week pledged Egypt's authorities would cooperate fully with Italian investigators probing Regeni's killing and "unravel the mystery surrounding the incident".
