The body of slain Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni was due arrive on Saturday at Rome's Fiumicino airport and to undergo an autopsy and toxicology tests at La Sapienza university's medicine department, prosecutors said.
Earlier on Friday, Egyptian authorities turned over Regeni's remains to the Umberto I Italian Hospital in Cairo, where a mass was due to be held for him amid tight security.
Regeni's half-naked corpse with signs of torture was found on Wednesday in a ditch on the outskirts of Cairo after he vanished on 25 January on his way to meet a friend in the centre of the city. The Cambridge University doctoral student had been in Cairo since September to do research on trade unions since the fall of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
On Wednesday Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi assured Italian premier Matteo Renzi in a phone-call that he has ordered his national prosecutor and interior ministry to "make every effort" to find out how Regeni died.
Renzi told former army chief Sisi that Italy must be granted "full access" to the investigation into what he called a "horrible murder".
Rome prosecutors have opened a murder probe against person or persons unknown in the death of Regeni and has asked Egypt to provide the documentation of its own probe of the case.
Italy's president Sergio Mattarella said he is "deeply disturbed" by Regeni's murder and called for the perpetrators of "this brutal crime" to be brought to justice.
A team of seven police officers is set to leave for Cairo on Friday to closely follow the investigation, government sources told ANSA late on Thursday.
