Egypt official: Tortured Italian student died 'slow death'

CAIRO -- The body of an Italian graduate student who disappeared last month has been found with multiple stab wounds, cigarette burns and other signs of torture and a "slow death" on a roadside on the outskirts of Cairo, an Egyptian prosecutor said Thursday.

Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University Ph.D. candidate who had been researching labor rights in Egypt, went missing Jan. 25, the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. His body was found Wednesday.

News of the slaying and evidence of torture spurred diplomatic tensions. An Italian government delegation cut short a visit to Cairo, and Italy summoned the Egyptian ambassador in Rome, calling for a full investigation with participation by Italian experts.

Regeni's disappearance came at a time when Egyptian officials and media often have depicted foreigners as plotting against Egypt -- and particularly as seeking to foment unrest surrounding the Jan. 25 anniversary.

In the days leading up to the anniversary, police were on high alert, conducting sweeps aimed at preventing any possible protest. Pro-democracy activists were arrested, and some foreigners whose visas had expired were deported.

Egypt also is battling an insurgency by militants who have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group. The militants are active mainly in the Sinai Peninsula but also have carried out attacks in Cairo and elsewhere, including kidnapping and beheading a Croatian oil worker last year and setting off a bomb outside the Italian consulate in Cairo.

On Thursday, Egyptian media accused "evil hands" of orchestrating Regeni's killing to damage Egyptian-Italian relations.

The term usually is used to refer to Islamists, who have been targeted by a ferocious crackdown since the 2013 military ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.