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Amnesty International calls on Italy to adopt ‘more severe’ measures toward Cairo

July 21, 2016 at 3:13 pm

Spokesman for Amnesty International in Italy Riccardo Nuri called on Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni to implement more severe measures against Egypt after Cairo’s recent decision not to cooperate with Italian investigators regarding the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni.

Italian state radio quoted Nuri as saying that the recent refusal by the authorities in Cairo to cooperate with Italian investigators means that the case has been frozen and there should be an Italian initiative regarding more severe measures toward Egypt as soon as possible.

The committees of foreign affairs, defence, national security and human rights in the Egyptian parliament endorsed on Tuesday a decision to reject the Italian side’s demands to get the recordings of one million voice calls and footage extracted from cameras in a number of places in Egypt.

The Egyptian side’s reasoning behind the decision is that providing such data to Italy would be a “violation of the Egyptian constitution”.  Italy had also reportedly asked Egypt to hand over three people who were linked to Regeni during his stay in Egypt.

Nuri demanded the Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni implement what he promised, which is “more severe measures” against Egypt in the event of non-cooperation regarding the investigation.