File:"Truth for Giulio" - Daniel Zeichner MP for Cambridge (second from the right) attends a vigil in memory of Giulio Regeni and the hundreds of Egyptians disappeared and tortured every year. (32657432926).jpg

About one hundred people gathered in the English city of Cambridge for a vigil to mark the first anniversary of the discovery of the horrificly mutilated corpse of Cambridge university student, Giulio Regeni, at the edge of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road in Egypt.

Amnesty International Cambridge called on people to gather at 6 pm on 3rd February in front of Great St Mary's church in the city centre. Many brought tealights and candles and others placards with messages of solidarity and demands for justice - "Truth for Giulio Regeni".

Within hours of the discovery of his body, his family knew that he must have been the victim of the most horrific sustained violence. His corpse was so horrificly mutiliated that his mother explained he was virtually unrecognisable. She could only identiy him from the tip of his nose.

But what was equally striking was the location where the body had been dumped, on one of Egypt's busiest highways close to the watchtowers of a security services base.

On 25th January 2016, the fifth anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising, a thirty year old Italian national Giulio Regeni disappeared from the streets of Cairo.

He was a student of one of Britain's most prestigious universities - Cambridge and was researching the crucial role of trade unions in relation to Egyptian political power and workers' rights.

During his research he managed to cultivate contacts with numerous key individuals within several Independent trade unions which the Egyptian government planned to make illegal. He often expressed fear to his friends that he might be detained by Egyptian authorities.

It was not until 3 February 2016, nine days after his disappearance, that Regeni's half-naked and battered corpse was found dumped by the roadside. His mother remarked that Giulio's disfigured face carried "all the evils of the world."

A senior Egyptian police official, who it was later discovered had a prior criminal record for both torture and murder, announced that Regeni had been the victim of a road traffic accident.

However an Italian autopsy indicated that he had been tortured to death over a period of approximately one week and had suffered over 24 bone fractures, multiple stab wounds, numerous cigarette burns and sharp razor cuts and that all his finger and toe nails had been yanked out.

On 21 April a Reuters correspondent reported that he had received confirmation of Regeni's arrest and detention by Egyptian security services in January from no fewer than six sources in Egypt's police and intelligence services but Egypt's Interior Minister angrily denied the report as having "no basis in truth."

The Regeni case is not an isolated incident - every month dozens of Egyptians, from among those who either dare to criticize the government or dare in anyway not to conform, are forcibly disappeared from their homes or from the streets and many of them either die in detention or eventually appear months later in court charged with offences, such as protesting without a license or spreading false information against the state.

Recent estimates put the number of political detainees in Egypt's prisons at approximately 40,000.

The Italian government have been infuriated by the lack of any honest attempt by the Egyptian authorities to discover and punish those responsible for Regeni's murder. Although some Italians have been disappointed by the very limited scale of Italian diplomatic and economic reprisals - they have at least gone further than the British government - withdrawing their ambassador in April for consultations and on 30 June the Italian senate voted to halt aviation supplies for Egyptian military aircraft including F-16s.

Meanwhile the British government has done virtually nothing - except issue a brief statement after it was embarrassed into action by an online parliamentary petition - prior to which I'm unaware of any statement on the issue by British diplomats who appear to wish to prioritize profit and trade over human rights.

More information about the Regeni case and the human rights crisis in Egypt can be found from

The Egypt Solidarity Initiative at

egyptsolidarityinitiative.org/

and also on Facebook or from Amnesty International at