Egyptian police claim to have shot dead four men responsible for the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, sparking confusion and outrage among those who believe that evidence in the case points to a cover-up of state involvement.

In a statement provided to the Guardian late on Thursday night, as well as posted on the ministry of interior Facebook page, Egyptian officials said police had targeted four men “specialised in impersonating policemen, kidnapping foreigners and stealing their money” and “in an exchange of fire between police forces and the men, all the gang members were killed”.

Regeni’s body was discovered showing signs of torture on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road on 3 February, following his mysterious disappearance on 25 January. Blows and burns on his body were consistent with torture by Egyptian security officials, but the country’s public prosecution office and ministry of justice declined to question any members of the security services in connection with his death.

Italian politicians immediately cast doubt on the Egyptian claims. “I’m sorry, I don’t buy it,” tweeted former prime minister Enrico Letta. MP Francesco Ferrara told the Ansa news agency the claim left too many questions unanswered, including why Regeni had been detained for days before being killed. “The Italian government and prosecutors shouldn’t give any credibility to what seems like a false reconstruction,” he said.

“According to Egypt, a gang just happened, after two months, to still have Giulio’s bag and IDs safely preserved and easily retrievable during a shoot-out,” said Paz Zarate, a friend of Regeni’s.

The circumstances of Regeni’s torture and murder have left Italian officials and citizens aghast. Egypt has repeatedly insisted it conducted an impartial investigation in cooperation with Italian counterparts - including a search of Regeni’s apartment inCairo - yet Italian officials conducted their own investigation into Regeni’s death, including a separate autopsy.

The doctoral student disappeared while researching trade unions in Egypt, a subject considered sensitive in the years following the country’s 2011 revolution.



The gang members named as Regeni’s killers are detailed as aged between 26 and 60, with three of them listed as accused in a large number of other cases of theft from foreign nationals.

The statement said a search of one gang member’s house unearthed a red duffel bag with an Italian flag that contained Regeni’s student cards, credit cards, mobile phones and a brown wallet with his passport in, as well as a second wallet emblazoned with the word “love” and other personal effects such as sunglasses.

Egyptian brigadier general Hathem Fathy denied a child had been present after pictures of an official search appeared to show a child’s hands in the background. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Egypt’s interior ministry attached photos of Regeni’s identification documents to the statement. In conversation with the Guardian, spokesman Brig Gen Hathem Fathy said the photos were taken when the police searched the house of “one of the gangsters responsible for killing Regeni”.

The images show Regeni’s documents laid on a large silver tray or held up against a wall. When asked why a child’s hands holding a mobile phone are clearly visible in the background of one of the pictures purporting to be of a police search, Fathy answered by repeatedly insisting that “no children” were involved or present.

Egypt’s police and interior ministry also declined to state why the gang members were killed, rather than arrested.

The private Egyptian newspaper Tahrir News published a series of gruesome pictures purportedly of a microbus following the claimed shootout on Thursday, with the bullet-ridden corpses of at least two gang members inside. At least 27 bullet holes are shown on the front windscreen of the bus and no visible weapons next to either body.

Officials from Egypt’s public prosecution office had earlier denied any link between the gang and Regeni’s killing. It was some hours later that the official statement was released providing details of the raid and the alleged pictures of the house search.

The Italian foreign ministry did not comment on the news immediately. But the development was met with incredulity and outrage on the homepage of the major Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Calling the allegations by the Egyptian ministry that Regeni was killed by a criminal gang “something that does not even vaguely represent the truth about the murder”, a prominent comment piece on the newspaper’s website said that the only thing worse than the “concealment of truth” was “a truth of convenience, unverifiable”.



The words echoed an earlier statement by the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, who said in the weeks after Regeni’s murder that Italy would not accept a “convenient truth” in its quest for answers.

Citing unnamed Italian investigators and prosecutors involved in the case, the Italian news agency Ansa later said there were three inconsistencies in Cairo’s latest version of events, which Italian authorities considered fundamental: it was not seen as credible that a band of kidnappers would have maintained Regeni’s documents and risked discovery if they had killed him; it was seen as unbelievable that kidnappers who were looking for money would have tortured him for over a week; and there were doubts about the alleged firefight that killed the men who purportedly killed Regeni.

The unnamed sources also said Egypt had not yet responded to two requests for information. Italian investigators have not yet received video images from the area around where Regeni lived, and the two nearby underground stations. They have also requested but not received certain mobile phone records that could have helped identify Regeni’s movements on the night he disappeared.





