Giulio Regeni, a PhD student at Girton College and the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), was in Cairo conducting research for his doctoral thesis when he disappeared on 25th January. His body was found nine days later near a highway on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital. On Wednesday, Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that, according to sources inside the investigations team, 37 people had been arrested in connection with his death.

Described as a “passionate and gifted student” by Italian media, he was a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo, a city he had previously stayed in prior to his doctorate studies when he worked with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Regeni was fascinated by Middle Eastern economics and had been in Egypt conducting fieldwork since September last year, investigating the formation of independent trade unions in post-Mubarak Egypt, which has become a sensitive topic in recent years.

On 25th January, the fifth anniversary of the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s almost 30-year reign in Egypt, Regeni left his apartment in an upper-middle-class district at around 8pm to meet a friend, with the intention of taking the metro from Duqqi to Bab al-Louq. He was not heard from since. Following his disappearance, his friends and family tried to obtain information on his whereabouts via Twitter, using the hashtag #whereisgiulio. It was originally suspected that he may have been caught up in the police-protester clashes in Tahrir Square, but this was disproved when his body was found by police on patrol nine days later, on 3rd February, in a ditch near a Cairo-Alexandria desert road. Reports from local media say that Regeni’s body had been found naked from the waist down and that there were signs his body had been dragged along the ground.

Medical examinations reveal that, of the various injuries Regeni sustained, a blow to the vertebrae in the neck had killed him. Initially, the senior investigator of the Giza General Investigation Administration ruled out foul play, saying that there is “no suspicion of crime in the death of the young Italian Giulio Regeni”, with the Egyptian Ministry of Interior reporting to Al-Youm Al-Sabea newspaper that Regeni had died in a car accident.

This account was then contradicted by an Egyptian prosecutor and the forensic medicine department, saying that Regeni’s body displayed signs of torture, which the Italian ambassador confirmed.

There were no noticeable stab wounds on Regeni’s body, but there were cigarette burns and extensive bruising on his shoulders and chest, as well as cuts to his ears. Regeni’s body was flown back to Rome on the 6th, where a second autopsy was performed, along with a CAT scan and toxicology tests.

The Italian Minister of the Interior has condemned Regeni’s murder as “inhuman, animal-like”. La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, reported that Regeni had been “systematically beaten” – his finger and toenails had been pulled out in a pattern of torture, suggesting, according to the newspaper, that he had been identified as a spy. Other Italian news reports claim that Italian authorities suspected Egyptian security forces of interrogating, torturing, and ultimately killing Regeni in an attempt to learn more about the contacts he had made as part of his research. The Egyptian Foreign Minister has vehemently denied these accusations, calling them “judgments and insinuations, unjustified and without proof”, while the Italian Foreign Undersecretary has said all speculation regarding Regeni’s being an intelligence informer is “patently groundless”. Italian and Egyptian authorities have now launched a joint investigation into his death, with the Egyptian ambassador to Italy saying the tragedy will “not ruin relations between Egypt and Italy”, and that it is not possible to “rule out” Regeni’s murder being an act of extremists.

In response to Regeni’s death, a petition calling for the UK government to ensure a credible investigation of Regeni’s death was started, so far amassing just under 2,000 signatures, a tenth of them coming from Cambridge alone.

The incident also triggered an outcry amongst academics. An open letter published by The Guardian attracted more than 4,600 signatories from senior academics across 90 countries. The letter called on Egyptian authorities to “cooperate with an independent and impartial investigation into all instances of forced disappearances, cases of torture and deaths in detention”.

The letter comes in the wake of the government’s increasingly repressive measures, which saw security forces crack down on dissent in the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the revolution, in addition to downtown security sweeps, which rounded up dozens of anti-government activists.

Hossam Bahgat, a prominent Egyptian investigative journalist and human rights advocate who was recently detained by Egypt’s intelligence agency, said that the scale of state repression in Egypt is greater today than it has been for generations.

A memorial for Giulio Regeni is to be held today outside the Italian Embassy in London, to coincide with his funeral.

ANALYSIS: Are researchers safe abroad?