The murder of the Italian Ph.D. Guilio Regeni dominates the discussion session of the foreign affairs committee in the Egyptian parliament especially after the failure of the chief of the committee’s visit to Rome
The meeting is expected to be attended by representatives from the Egyptian government, the ministry of interior and foreign ministry as well as members of the general prosecution and the general intelligence to preview Orabi’s official visit to Rome.
Last week, the chief of the Egyptian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee Mohamed El Orabi was officially assigned by the parliament to visit Italy and meet Italian officials in the light of the Italian Senate’s recent decision to halt the supply of warplanes to Egypt in protest against Regeni’s issue.
In his visit, Orabi underlined the importance of continuing a dialogue in order to contain the crisis over the murder of the Italian Ph.D. student. Al-Orabi added that he asked the Italian side to look for ideas that are “out of the box” during his visit, where he was attending the meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly-Union for the Mediterranean (PA-UfM).
However, an Egyptian PM said that the chief of the foreign affairs committee prepared a mem showing that the Italian side has refused all the justifications presented by the Egyptian side on Guilio Regeni’s murder. He also pointed that the Italian security officials believe that the Ph.D. student has been killed on purpose because of his status as a political activist, according to al-Arabi al-Jadeed.
Guilio Regeni is a PhD student who has disappeared in the fifth anniversary of January Revolution in 2011. His dead body was found brutally tortured over a week later on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road.
In this context, the Egyptian PM pointed to al-Arabi al-Jadeed that Orabi will explain to the meeting that the Egyptian-Italian relations are very critical.
There are also fears that the deterioration in the Egyptian Italian relations will have negative repercussions on the human rights and education because the Italian student was preparing a Ph.D. study at one of the Italian universities and this would probably turn the international universities and institutions against Egypt if it was proved that he was killed by an official institution.
He also pointed that the chief of the committee will also call the concerned official institutions to investigate the accident with transparency and to announce the real truth to the public opinion in both countries in order to end this crisis.
The chief of the foreign affairs committee expected that the crisis would develop and reach the UN Security Council then to the International Criminal Court if the crisis wasn’t resolved, warning that this will mean isolating Egypt internationally, and exposing the country to a political and economic siege, as well as international security prosecutions for the Egyptian leaders. At that time, the situation will cause a great embarrassment to Egypt in front of the international public opinion as well as payment of huge compensations for the Italian government.
Moreover, Egyptian reports ensure that there are sovereign institutions in Egypt which are behind Regeni’s murder (28 years old) who came to Egypt in December 2015 to make a research about labor unions in Egypt after January Revolution.
There are expectations that the foreign affairs committee in the Egyptian parliament will call for the formation of a neutral committee from experts and members of the human rights committee to investigate the incident to determine if there were any involvement by any security institution in the accident especially that there were news stating that Regeni has been tortured and murdered inside a building related to the national security sector, and then his body was thrown away in order not to suspect the involvement of the security body in the crime.
