ROME – Cairo is set to begin operations alongside Italian investigators on 15 May to salvage CCTV recordings connected to the death of Giulio Regeni in 2016, according to a joint statement from the Public Prosecutors of Rome and Egypt.

 Egyptian prosecutor Nabil Sadek revealed that, following a phone call with Rome’s chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, the pair had agreed to take further measures “in order to reach definitive results on the killing of Regeni.”

 “The Rome chief prosecutor has decided to send a delegation headed by his assistant, Sergio Colaiocco, and comprising Italian technical experts to attend the retrieval process, on which both sides pin high hopes to reach the truth about the incident and to uncover its perpetrators,” a joint statement read.

 The Italian PhD student at Cambridge University, Giulio Regeni, had been carrying out research into street-seller unions in the Egyptian capital – an extremely politically sensitive issue.

 He went missing in Cairo on 25 Jan 2016 and his body was found nine days later, in a ditch on the road to Alexandria with clear indications that he had been tortured.

 Egyptian authorities had previously resisted from handing over the video footage which Italy has been demanding since 3 Feb 2016, shortly after the student’s death.

 Regeni’s parents had also called for Egyptian police to disclose underground footage ever since their son’s disappearance, appealing for a “joint investigative strategy” between Egypt and Italy.

 However, Cairo’s stance now appears to have changed.

 The prosecutors’ statement added that “the common wish is that this activity enables decisive progress towards the truth of the facts and the identification of the guilty”

They highlighted the significant role played by the Egyptian and Italian ambassadors in encouraging a renewed commitment from both countries towards settling the case.

 Italian experts now hope that surveillance camera images, spanning the city’s district of Dokki and the site where the corpse was discovered, will shed light upon what has been a grey area of the investigation to date.

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