ROME -- The computer of Cambridge researcher Giulio Regeni, found murdered in Cairo on Jan. 25, has been discovered to hold an entire archive of contacts the 28-year old had ammassed of Egyptian dissidents, increasing speculation that he was killed at the hands of Egyptian security services, Il Messaggero reported.

 Regeni's contact list included names and telephone numbers of a wide range of trade unionists and members of Egyptian opposition groups that the student had gathered through meetings and gatherings, to go towards research for his doctoral thesis on the country's economy and labour movement following the 2011 revolution.

 The information has strengthened suspicions that Regeni was intercepted by members of Egypt's security services in an attempt to gain access to his contacts, likely wanted by the country's repressive military regime.

 It has also come to light that Regeni had worked for Oxford Analytica in 2013, a consultancy group specialising in "global analysis" for multinationals, finance corporations and governments which could have passed information to intelligence agencies. Among its advisors are the former US Secretary of State John Negroponte and ex-head of British Secret Services Colin McColl.

 Suggestions that Regeni was in fact working as a spy for either the Egyptian or Italian governments have been flatly denied by his family, whose lawyer released a statement saying that they "categorically and unequivocally deny that Giulio was an agent or a collaborator for any secret service, Italian or foreign."

 The family said that "to put forward the idea that Giulio Regeni worked for an intelligence service is to offend the memory of a young university student who had done field research with legitimate ambition in his studies and his life."

 Egyptian authorities have come under accusation after an autopsy on Regeni's body revealed signs of prolonged violence and possible torture. A senior figure at the forensics authority in Cairo told Reuters that Regeni was found with several broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain haemorrhage.

 Internationally known Egyptian writer Ala Al-Aswnay, who knew Regeni in Cairo, said in an interview with Il Fatto Quotidiano that "one thing is sure" about the student's death - "he was tortured." He emphasised that this was "a practice that the members of the security services of the current regime use systematically against those who show even the slightest dissent."

 Italian and Egyptian prosecutors are pursuing separate investigations in Cairo, but the latter has come under criticism after it was discovered that the officer in charge of the investigations had a previous conviction for complicity in abduction and torture - to death - of an Egyptian man in 2003.

 The Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has been widely condemned by activists and human rights groups for his authoritarian rule of the country since seizing power in 2014, with 600 cases of torture being reported the following year by the Al Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.

 The Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni has demanded "the full truth" behind Regeni's murder, but the Italian government has been slow to condemn the country they count as one of their biggest trade partners.

 At a memorial for Regeni in front of the Italian embassy in Cairo, an Egyptian man held up a sign written in Arabic which read "Giulio was one of us, and he died like one of us." A message of solidarity, but also one that illustrates a wider crisis surrounding Regeni's death.

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