In the case of the murder of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Egypt in 2016, two new testimonies revealed that he was detained, interrogated, and tortured at the headquarters of the Egyptian Military Intelligence headquarters before his murder. Al-Araby TV broadcast this information as part of a television investigative programme entitled Buried Facts, which dealt with developments in the case of Regeni’s murder.

To preserve the confidentiality of the witnesses, the programme team called the first witness the pseudonym Shaheen while referring to the second witness as the doctor. The witness, Shaheen, said in his testimony, “I was imprisoned after Al-Sisi took office, and I saw Regeni for the first time in the place where I was detained, and I saw him while he was outside for investigation, and he was tied up, and the effects of torture were clear on him.” The second witness, the doctor, added that he saw Regeni in the prison of the Egyptian Military Intelligence headquarters in Nasr City on January 28 and 29, 2016.

The witness explains the nature of the detention facility, saying it is a security and not governmental prison because it is an unrecognised prison, and no one knows about it. Most of the political detainees have been detained in this prison and forcibly disappeared, and no one knew anything about them.

Last week, the Italian newspaper Corriere de la Sierra reported that a new witness in the Regeni case confirmed that Egyptian security planned immediately to announce that he was robbed and killed, even before the body was found. Through his relationship with the unionist who informed Regeni, the witness explained that National Security would have found a way to hold a gang of thieves responsible for killing by finding the victim’s documents with them.

The newspaper said that this is exactly what happened a month and a half after Giulio’s death when the Egyptian authorities accused a group of criminals specialised in robbery and kidnapping of foreigners. Regeni, a 26-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University, was conducting research in Cairo when he disappeared for nine days, and then his body was found with signs of torture in February 2016.