On April 7, the Qatari-owned Al-Quds al-Arabi daily carried the following lead editorial: “Yesterday on Wednesday, two Italian newspapers said that the Egyptian security official handling the preliminary investigations into the murder of researcher Giulio Regeni, was the one who ordered his abduction and torturing to death. La Repubblica even named General Khaled Chalabi, the Giza investigations chief, as the man responsible for the crime, adding that “the Egyptian command is implicated in Regeni’s murder,” knew about his abduction, and approved it. The Italian newspaper continued that it received the information from an “unknown source in Egypt’s intelligence apparatuses,” assuring nonetheless that the source was reliable, since he gave details about Regeni’s torture, which have not yet been revealed publicaly.

“Also according to the paper, Regeni’s abduction and torturing aimed to uncover the names of those whom he contacted at the Egyptian trade unions. But when he refused to talk, he was subject to brutal interrogation, which eventually led to his death at the hands of the Egyptian military intelligence executioners. This report emerged following blatant threats by the Italian government via Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, saying that his country will not allow anyone to “step on Italy’s dignity,” pointing to Rome’s readiness to adopt measures against Egypt, “if no palpable change is seen” at the level of the investigations into Regeni’s death. This threat had been preceded by a harsh-toned decision by the European Union, which considered that Regeni’s murder “fell in the context of a repeated phenomenon of torturing, arrests and killings, witnessed in Egypt in the last few years.”

“On the Egyptian side, and although President Abdul Fattah es-Sisi insisted for the second time on “full and transparent cooperation with Italy to present the criminals to justice,” nothing was seen beyond contradictory and weak official tales... Hence, after claims saying that the Egyptian authorities had killed the members of a gang “specializing in the kidnapping of foreigners,” and that the possessions of the victim were found in the house of one of these members’ sister – a tale that the authorities later pulled out of circulation – we heard a much sillier tale, “denying” that Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri informed his American counterpart John Kerry that the Italian journalist “died while participating in an orgy.” Obviously such tales can only occur to the Egyptian security officers and officials, who are pointlessly trying to conceal the obvious truth...

“In light of the Italian insistence on pushing the investigation in a logical direction, by pressuring the Egyptian security authorities into announcing their responsibility for the student’s murder, the only scenario to which Cairo might resort is to hold General Chalabi responsible for the crime, in the hope of eliminating the responsibility of the higher-ranked “sovereign sides.” What is unfortunate at this level is that the aforementioned officer has a record in committing such practices, which he eluded because they targeted Egyptians. Hence, he was accused of torturing and killing an Egyptian citizen in 2000, and his one-year prison sentence was suspended. Moreover, he was the Alexandria investigations chief when another citizen was abducted, tortured and killed in January 2011.

“The reason behind the Egyptian authorities’ repeated attempts to prevent the truth from coming out, is probably these “sovereign sides’” fear of seeing international justice reaching them, which would lead to the prosecution of the entire regime, not just influential figures in it.”