‘NCHR promote culture rights for Egyptian’: official

CAIRO – 24 July 2018: Head of the National Council for Human Rights, Mohamed Fayek, stressed that the council cooperates with the state and civil society organizations in order to promote culture rights in Egypt, according to a statement issued by the council Sunday.


This came during a meeting with Gambaolo Cantini, Italy's ambassador and his delegation to Egypt.


Fayek added that the meeting discussed the ways of cooperation on issues of mutual interest and ways to exchange experiences in the human rights field.


On Jan. 25, 2016, the 28-year old Italian postgraduate student Giulio Regeni disappeared in Cairo, only for his dead body to be found on Feb. 3 alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway, bearing signs of torture and beating.


Regeni was kidnapped and murdered in Cairo in 2016. Egyptian authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement in Regeni's murder.


The Regeni case has strained ties between Egypt and Italy, which had recalled its ambassador over the case. Relations were restored in August when Rome said it would return its ambassador to Cairo and continue to search for Regeni's killers.


“It is clear now why some powers tried to spoil our relations using Italian student Giulio Regeni’s case. I promise you all again to bring his killers to trial,” President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said during the inauguration ceremony of the Zohr natural gas field last January.

The Italian had been researching Egypt’s independent labour unions for a doctorate at Cambridge. Rome prosecutors seized the computer and mobile phone of his Cambridge tutor, Maha Abdel Rahman. Upon the initial examination of the material, it was found “useful”.


Cambridge University has rejected any suggestion that Abdel Rahman might be implicated in Regeni’s death.