Egyptian foreign ministry: Prison sentences handed down to killers of French citizen prove Egyptian judiciary’s “independence”

The Egyptian foreign ministry hinted that the prison sentences handed down to defendants accused of killing a French citizen in Egypt sends a message about the “independence and integrity of Egyptian judiciary” to Italians who are pressuring Cairo to find out what happened to Italian student Giulio Regeni,  who was tortured to death in Egypt.

On Sunday, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced six defendants to seven years in prison on charges of murdering French citizen Eric Lang, who was an officer and researcher at the French Centre in Cairo at the age of 49.

“The latest ruling also confirms Egypt’s consistent position in its communications with some Western countries, most prominently France, stressing the need to grant the judiciary sufficient time to process this case with all of its elements,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The ruling comes one month after a visit by French President Francois Hollande to Cairo amid Western criticism of Egypt over the absence of any court rulings issued in the case of Lang’s murder.

Lang was killed inside the Qasr al-Nil prison station in the wake of the June 2013 mass protests that were followed by the military ouster of then-President Mohamed Morsi.

During his visit to Cairo in April, Hollande said in a press conference that he spoke with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about the state of human rights in Egypt. He said that he also mentioned Lang and Italy’s Regeni and the conditions that surrounded their deaths.

In response to criticisms in Western media, which likened Lang’s murder to Regeni’s, Hollande said he discussed Lang’s case with his Egyptian counterpart.

The Egyptian foreign ministry had said that Lang was murdered in September 2013 when cellmates assaulted him in a police station in Cairo. Lang’s family asked Hollande to reopen their son’s file to reveal the truth about how he was killed.

Lang’s mother called on the French embassy in Cairo and the French government to ask the Egyptian authorities to reopen the investigation into Lang’s murder.

Lang’s mother said she believes there are other hands in her son’s death, calling into question the interior ministry’s account that entails he was murdered by cellmates. She added that he was a French teacher and a researcher who regularly wrote about the situation in Egypt, similar to Regeni. He published some of his writings on his Facebook page before getting arrested in the street, on the pretext that security forces wanted to double-check his identity, then he was detained in the Qasr al-Nil police station in Cairo.