ROME -- On Monday 25 July, at 19:41 on the dot, dozens of touches were lit in front of the Pantheon to ask for “truth and justice for Giulio Regeni.” Six months ago, at that exact time, the researcher disappeared forever after leaving his house to meet with an Italian professor, who had moved to Cairo for some time. Regeni’s body was found, lifeless and disfigured, eight days later, and the causes of his death are to this day still unknown. 

For this reason, Amnesty International, together with peace organisation Antigone and the Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms, have decided to take to the streets once more, to ask officials to shed light on the killing.

“We are here to ask, more pressingly than ever, for truth and justice,” say Regeni’s parents.  They also beg for “Egyptian authorities to work together with us on the matter. It is six months since the fateful day, and we still don’t know why Giulio was killed.” 

New light on the matter, on the investigative front, could come from technical consultation, a measure decided on by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in both Rome and Cairo, who will use CCTV footage from metro stations across the Egyptian capital to see if they can catch the last traces of Regeni before he disappeared into thin air. The hard disks will be sent to a specialist centre in Germany, where experts will piece together footage from the fateful day to try and understand what happened to the researcher before he died.