EGYPT has protested at Italian prosecutors’ decision to try in absentia five Egyptian police and intelligence officials they say were involved in the 2016 abduction, torture and murder of an Italian labour-movement researcher.

Cambridge graduate Giulio Regeni was researching Egyptian trade unions when he was kidnapped and killed in January 2016. Though Egyptian authorities put to death four men they said were responsible for kidnapping and killing him in March that year, Italian investigators have long said they are convinced it was a police job.

Egypt said that Italy’s prosecution of the five officers was “baseless” and that it would close its own investigation into Mr Regeni’s murder. 

The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, which seized power from the elected administration of Mohammed Morsi in a 2014 military coup, has cracked down on independent trade unionism, banned strikes as “against Islamic teachings” in 2015 and has executed hundreds of political opponents — Reprieve says Egypt has put 85 people to death so far in 2020.