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| Italy doubts Egypt’s claim that gang linked to student death | Italy doubts Egypt’s claim that gang linked to student death |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| ROME — Italian politicians and state media cast doubt Friday on Egypt’s claims that police had identified gang members linked to the torture and death of an Italian student, amid speculation that police themselves were involved in the killing. | |
| “I’m sorry, I don’t buy it,” tweeted former Premier Enrico Letta. | |
| Egypt’s Interior Ministry said Thursday that police found ID cards and other personal belongings of Giulio Regeni in a search of a house connected to a gang that specializes in abducting foreigners while posing as policemen. Four gang members were killed in a gunfight, the statement said. | |
| There was no official Italian response, despite the clamor that the Regeni case has sparked since the 28-year-old researcher disappeared Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising when police were heavily deployed across Cairo. His body was found nine days later bearing signs of torture. | |
| Italy’s state-run RAI and Italian politicians questioned the Egyptian scenario and demanded the truth. | |
| “There’s no explanation for why ordinary criminals, whose alleged objective was a robbery or ransom, would have inflicted such cruelty that is used only by torture professionals,” said Pia Locatelli, head of the lower chamber’s human rights committee. “And there’s no explanation why they would have kept his documents, miraculously found, rather than immediately getting rid of such a shocking proof of their crime.” | |
| Lawmaker Francesco Ferrara, a member of parliament’s Copasir security committee, said the Egyptian theory left too many questions unanswered, including why Regeni had been detained for days before being killed. | |
| “The Italian government and prosecutors shouldn’t give any credibility to what seems like a false reconstruction,” he was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. | |
| The doubts weren’t confined to Italy. | |
| Prominent activist Wael Ghoneim, one of the top activists of the uprising and an anti-police torture advocate, said the Egyptian theory was “very cute.” | |
| “So after they kidnapped Regeni and tortured him to death, they kept his passport, university ID in their house as a souvenir,” he wrote on Facebook. | |
| Rabab el-Mahdi, one of Regeni’s friends and a university professor, said she was “sad, angry, and speechless regarding the recent killing of four people on the pretext that they killed Giulio.” | |
| “This sad excuse for a government just decides to murder every time they are cornered,” she wrote on her Facebook page. | |
| Ahmed Nagy, the chief prosecutor in Regeni’s case, told The Associated Press that prosecutors were investigating the police claims and would question two women who testified that Regeni’s personal possessions, found in one of the women’s apartments, belonged to one of the slain gang members. | |
| ___ | |
| AP writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed. | |
| Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |