Murder of Italian student in Egypt has pitted calls for academic freedom against demands of investigators

To his friends, there was never much doubt that Giulio Regeni was profoundly happy to be a student at Cambridge University, which seemed to be a perfect fit for the gifted and ambitious young Italian researcher.

But in the two years since his tortured body was found in a roadside ditch near Cairo, a murder that many blame on forces within the Egyptian security state, Cambridge’s reluctance to be publicly involved in the investigation into the student’s death has become a flashpoint for controversy.

Italian investigators frustrated by Egyptian stonewalling have also struggled to get answers to questions in the UK, such as whether Regeni was ever pushed beyond his comfort level to pursue his research of the Egyptian labour movement, and whether Cambridge ought to have done more to safeguard the 28-year-old.

At the centre of the debacle lies an Egyptian professor named Dr Maha Abdelrahman, who served as Regeni’s tutor and has been a favourite target of Italian press reports, who have painted her as wilfully resisting demands for information.

This month the Cambridge professor will face Italian interrogators in the UK, after she agreed to answer their questions. The move, which was seen diplomatically as a breakthrough, was announced in December after a joint meeting between the Italian foreign minister, Angelino Alfano, and the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

The case has pitted calls for academic freedom against demands of Italian investigators seeking information about the Regeni case, and has provoked a rare display of finger-pointing between one of the world’s most respected universities and Italian officials.

People familiar with the furore say it has also created tensions between Regeni’s parents and Cambridge. It has raised suspicions, too, that the Italian government might be seeking to shift the focus away from Egypt and on to Cambridge for political reasons.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An unidentified participant shows a banner with the words ‘truth for Giulio’ at a protest in Italy last year. Photograph: Angelo Carconi/EPA

Behind the scenes, diplomats from both countries have sought to ease tensions that emerged shortly after Regeni’s funeral in Italy in 2016, which people familiar with the matter say was attended by Abdelrahman.

Italian police approached her informally after the service but she reportedly declined a full interview and later failed to fully respond to questions put to her by email. Those close to Abdelrahman say that she was deeply shaken by Regeni’s death, and was fearful about the manner of questioning.



In February last year, after facing down accusations that it was being less than cooperative, the then Cambridge vice-chancellor, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, wrote a letter to Johnson to express Cambridge’s dismay at the lack of progress in the international investigation. Cambridge would be prepared to “assist Her Majesty’s government in whatever way it can to see progress”, the letter said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paola Regeni, mother of Giulio Regeni, the Italian student murdered in Egypt, at a news conference at the upper house of the parliament in Rome. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

Italian prosecutors have made two formal requests to the UK for judicial cooperation on the investigation. The UK Foreign Office received the first in May 2016, and passed it to the Cambridge police, who requested that Italian prosecutors interview Abdelrahman. She declined.

Italian officials requested to speak with Abdelrahman again in August 2017.

The decision to agree to an interview now comes after a British judge approved a European investigation warrant, according to Alfano.

Abdelrahman took a leave of absence from teaching after Regeni’s murder. In Italian press reports, conspiracy theories began to emerge, including unfounded accusations that she supported the banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and that this may have made Egyptian authorities suspicious about Regeni.

A report in La Repubblica, which quoted a “confidential chat” between Regeni and a friend whom the Italian newspaper declined to identify, suggested that the Italian student and Abdelrahman had had a disagreement over her suggestion of an additional tutor who was based in Cairo, a choice that Regeni privately told his friend might be too active in politics, and could put him in the “spotlight”.

Regeni had applied to several other doctoral programmes, including the London School of Economics, where he proposed similar research on social movements but was ultimately refused funding, pushing him to Cambridge.

The university has declined to respond to requests for comment. It has insisted that it has been willing to cooperate, but only through formal legal channels and legal requests, not informal demands for information.

Friends and former colleagues of Regeni say his research was not conducted at the behest of the university, and that he was driven to research the politically sensitive topic of unions irrespective of institution.



JT Chalcraft, professor of Middle Eastern politics and history at LSE, linked the timing of Italy’s focus on Cambridge’s responsibilities to Italy’s growing business interests in Egypt.

“I’d like to draw attention to the fact that as the Italian minister for foreign affairs announced to the Italian parliament on 4 September 2017 that the Italians were effectively resuming business as usual with the government that murdered one of its citizens, at that very moment he mentioned the investigation of a British institution,” Chalcraft said.

“From what I understand, Dr Abdelrahman did everything correctly,” said Amro Ali, a friend of Abdelrahman and a professor who has taught at a variety of institutions across Egypt including the American University of Cairo, where Regeni was also affiliated.

Yet research viewed as contentious has caused researchers to be targeted in the past. In 2015, a French sociologist from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris known only as Fanny was deported from Egypt after conducting research on the banned 6 April youth movement in Egypt’s Nile Delta region. She later recounted that she knew she had been followed and surveilled long before her deportation.

Researchers and institutions alike had long factored in the risk of deportation and harassment. But the brutality of Regeni’s case shocked the academic community.

“Giulio’s case was something so out of the norm,” said Ali. “[But] this woke us up to new realities. There … is often a view that academics tend to be less threatened than journalists. But there’s another way of looking at this – journalists are easily identifiable, academics aren’t. Even if the security apparatus disagrees with a journalist, they know what a journalist is.”

One doctoral researcher who asked not to be named to protect the institutions they have studied at said: “A 28-year-old is an adult, and Regeni was someone who was very experienced and had spent a lot of time not just in Egypt but in Damascus as well – he had lived under authoritarian regimes for a considerable period of time.

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted this and Cambridge couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”