ROME - Police searched the home of Professor Maha Mahfouz Abdelrahman, the tutor of Italian student Giulio Regeni tortured to death in Cairo in 2016, and have seized computer equipment and a mobile phone, police sources say. 

 Regeni, a Cambridge University student, was found by the side of a motorway in Cairo, Egypt, on Feb. 3, 2016, after disappearing in Jan. while researching a project for the English university.

 His body was found bearing signs of torture, and there is suspicion that he may have been killed due to the nature of his project, a thesis paper on trade unions. 

Italian investigators, led by prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco, have travelled to Cambridge to work closely with British police to gain answers on the mysterious abduction and killing of Regeni. Students of Regeni previously sent to Cairo on research missions are also being interviewed by police. 

This week, with her lawyer, Professor Abdelrahman appeared before Italian emissaries and English police as a witness to the investigation. As reported in La Corriere della Sera, the Professor answered "I do not know" and "I do not remember" to many of the questions asked of her, including to why she received the crime book Gomorrah from Regeni. 

hl