Cairo defends alleged police killers of Italian student

Egypt's public prosecution has indicated that there is no basis to charge four policemen accused of the killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni. As previously reported in Legalbrief Today, Italy last month formally accused four Egyptian state security officers of the kidnap, torture and murder of the postgraduate student near Cairo in 2016. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence against a fifth agent. A report on the News24 site notes that the public prosecution issued a statement saying ‘there is no point in launching a criminal case ... due to the lack of knowledge of the perpetrator’. It said the authorities should ‘exclude what was attributed (by Italian prosecutors) to four officers ... from the papers in that incident’. Italy's Foreign Ministry described the stance as ‘unacceptable’.