Italy is in an uproar over the torture and murder in Egypt of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian doctoral student at Cambridge University who disappeared in Cairo on Jan. 25 and whose half-naked, battered body was found in a ditch Feb. 3, hours after Italian officials appealed directly to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt for help in locating the missing student.

Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, said Mr. Regeni’s body bore evidence of “inhuman, animal-like, unacceptable violence” — exactly the kind of torture security forces regularly inflict on Egyptians. It is unusual for Egyptian security services to target foreigners, and Egyptian authorities deny their security forces had anything to do with Mr. Regeni’s torture and death. On Monday, Egypt’s interior minister, Maj. Gen. Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, made an incredible claim: “Such crimes have never been attributed to the Egyptian security apparatus.”

The Italian press is not buying this story. A headline in La Repubblica on Monday read: “Giulio Regeni was tortured because they thought he was a spy.” In the paranoid realm of Egypt’s government-cowed news media, foreigners are regularly portrayed as spies.

Under Mr. Sisi’s government thousands of Egyptians have been imprisoned. Torture and enforced disappearance are commonplace. Academics, human rights activists and journalists have been specially singled out. Mr. Regeni’s murder is sure to put a deep chill on academic freedom in Egypt.