Paola Regeni used to burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

The mother of two and retired schoolteacher from the small northern Italian town of Fiumicello would cry while listening to a love song on the radio, even if the words were in a language she didn't understand. She would cry at funerals. She would cry when handed a beautiful drawing by a young child.

But, she says, since the broken, battered and burnt body of her 28-year-old son Giulio was found dumped on the side of a highway outside Cairo on Feb. 3, she has hardly shed a tear.

When the body of her son arrived in Italy, she said viewing his face "to which everything had been done" was like seeing all the evil of the world inflicted upon it.

"The only thing I recognized in Giulio," his mother said during a news conference in Rome this week, "was the tip of his nose."

Regeni, a University of Cambridge doctoral student, had been in Egypt researching independent labour unions when he disappeared on Jan. 25 on his way to a party in central Cairo.

Paola Regeni, mother of Giulio Regeni, the Italian student killed in Egypt, shouts during a news conference at the upper house of the parliament in Rome on March 29, 2016. (Remo Casilli/Reuters)

It was the five-year anniversary of the uprising that ended former president Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, a day in which the mammoth metropolis was virtually shut down, with heavy military patrols throughout the city.

Despite pressure from Italy, the investigation into Regeni's death has limped along. Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in power since 2013, personally reassured Italy that "as a father" and leader that Egypt "would spare no efforts" in finding those responsible.

Public anger

Yet this week, Italy's mounting frustration over the near complete lack of transparency and progress in the case — Italian judicial sources say they have received "nothing" from their Egyptian counterparts — erupted into public outrage.

That was after a Facebook post from the official page of the Egyptian Interior Ministry reported police had shot to death four men who were part of a "criminal gang" that kidnapped and robbed foreigners and that was allegedly responsible for kidnapping Regeni.

It reported that police had found Regeni's identification in a raid of the home of one of the gang members.

Shortly after — and likely as a result of Italy's outcry, say those involved — Egyptian prosecutors denied that the criminal gang was involved in his killing.

The Italian media, along with human rights groups, have hardly masked their widely held belief that Egypt's secret service is behind the death.

Egyptian forensic authorities who conducted the autopsy reported that Regeni's wounds revealed that he was beaten and burned for up to seven days, with signs of torture showing intervals of 10 to 14 hours.

Experts say those wounds provide irrefutable evidence he was interrogated for information. They also bear chilling resemblance to the wounds of hundreds of others tortured by Egypt's secret service — hardly the goal or approach of criminal gangs carrying out robberies.

Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar has rejected accusations about human rights abuses.

More torture cases

Yet Amnesty International Italy spokesperson Riccardo Nuri says since Ghaffar took office in March 2015, cases of torture in Egypt have proliferated.

Amnesty says in 2015, there were 474 cases of forced disappearances in secret prisons inside military bases, along with 1,676 cases of torture, 500 of which ended in death.

This year alone there have been 88 cases of torture, with eight deaths.

"We remind ourselves of this every day," says Regeni's mother. "At least the world is now talking about torture in Egypt."

Personal belongings of slain Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, including his passport, are displayed in this photo released by the Egyptian Ministry of Interior on March 24, 2016. (Egyptian Interior Ministry/Associated Press)

The day Regeni disappeared in Cairo, two Egyptian human rights activists also went missing. They were later found dead, and just like Regeni, their bodies were riddled with signs of torture.

The Ministry of Interior's explanation was as credible as the one initially provided this week for Regeni's death: the two apparently died while caught in the crossfire of a shootout between two criminal gangs.

Germano Dottori, a professor in strategic studies at Rome's Luiss University, says he believes the Egyptian government is responsible for Regeni's death, even if the formal order may not have come from the top political echelon.

"I think the case should be framed in a wider geopolitical context," says Dottori.

"In my opinion, it was conceived by people interested in sending a message to Italy, as well as to the U.S. and Great Britain, to stay out of Libya, where Egypt has very strong interests," he says, alluding to Libyan oil, which Egypt, lacking oil of its own, would like to take more control of.

'Not enough'

Dottori predicts Egypt will continue to propose different scapegoats for Regeni's killling until Italy finally accepts one.

"But they are discovering in the process," he adds, "that they have stroked a very sensitive cord in the Italian public opinion and that what has been done so far is not enough."

Yet given the important trade relations between Italy and Egypt, most foreign policy experts doubt Italy will do much in the end.

"Egypt is not a democracy. There is no real justice," says Jean-Pierre Darnis, head of the security and defence program at Italy's Institute for International Affairs.

"It's understandable that the Italian government and the family are demanding the truth, but Italy cannot stop its political relation with Egypt, even with this very sad case. I'm afraid we will never know what happened."

Mourners hold messages at a vigil for slain Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni in front of the Italian embassy in Cairo on Feb. 6, 2016. (Amr Nabil/Associated Press)

Next week, Egyptian police investigators are flying to Rome to hand over evidence to their Italian counterparts.

Alessandra Ballerini, the Regeni family lawyer, says her expectations are low.

"So far, the only sign that Egypt feels any pressure to back away from the implausible scenarios of Regeni's death is when it comes from the Italian media and huge mobilization on social media," she says. "It's essential this pressure keeps up."

Until she finds out the truth of who killed her son, Regeni says she will not stop putting pressure on authorities, both Egyptian and Italian.

Until she finds the truth, she says, she won't shed another tear.