Egypt has rejected the addition of members of its security services to an Italian list of suspects in the murder of the student Giulio Regeni, in a statement that spelled his name incorrectly.

“Egyptian law does not recognise what is called ‘the record of suspects’,” the state information service (SIS) said, citing an anonymous member of the judiciary. The statement was titled “Julio [sic] Regini’s case: charges should be based on evidence and not suspicions.”

Regeni’s mutilated corpse was found on a desert road outside Cairo nine days after he disappeared, on 25 January 2016. His parents could identify him only from “the tip of his nose”, his mother has said. There have been longstanding suspicions – denied by Egypt – that Egyptian authorities were responsible for his death.

After a meeting on 28 November between Rome’s deputy public prosecutor and his Egyptian counterparts, Italy added several members of Egypt’s national security agency (NSA) to a list of preliminary suspects last week.

Italian investigators had previously expressed suspicions that Regeni was followed by agents from the NSA, who also deployed Ahmed Abdullah, the head of the street vendors’ union, to surveil and film Regeni while he researched trade unions in Egypt, a politically sensitive subject.

The Italian paper Corriere della Serra outlined last week how Italian intelligence researched Regeni’s movements in his final days.

In its statement released on Sunday night, the SIS cast doubt on the quality of the Italian investigation and whether it was possible to list the suspects under the Italian legal system.

Paz Zarate, a friend of Regeni, tweeted: “Egypt not only continues to lie but also to show disrespect by not writing his name right. It’s easy to spell, so this must be a deliberate gesture to indicate where the investigation is going: nowhere.”

