EGYPT’S Interior Ministry denied yesterday that murdered Italian student Giulio Regeni had been arrested before his death.

The Cambridge PhD student from Fiumicello in north-east Italy disappeared in Cairo on January 25 on his way to a meeting.

His body was found dumped beside a road on February 3, bearing signs of torture.

The ministry said that it was investigating the crime in co-operation with Italy and that the conclusions would be made public once there was “solid information.”

Italian Foreign Minister  Paolo Gentiloni said Rome would ensure that its investigators in Cairo received full co-operation.

“It is clear we will not be satisfied with easy reconstructions and convenient truths,” he said. “It is also clear the passage of time will not diminish our commitment to this question.”

Lack of arrest records would not rule out his abduction by the Baltagiya militias recruited from the city’s slums as government enforcers.

Mr Regeni was researching the rise of independent trade unions outside existing state-sanctioned labour structures.

He examined their role in the 2011 overthrow of ex-president Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi following mass protests over its “Islamification” of the state.

While in Cairo, he worked for the United Nations industrial development organisation.

He also contributed to Italian communist daily Il Manifesto, albeit under a pseudonym to avoid drawing attention to himself, telling how the last few years’ events in Egypt coincided with “massive and widespread workers’ struggle.”

He was due to speak at a conference in Vienna in July on how “all forms of independent activism are invariably repressed or co-opted by the counterrevolution.”

Fellow Italian and former Cambridge student Leonardo Impett, who also recently carried out research in Egypt, said: “Giulio was clearly a widely loved and respected researcher at Cambridge and his stay in Cairo merged with his political interests.”

Mr Impett said there were tensions between secular unions and the Muslim Brotherhood, though not enough to explain Mr Regeni’s murder.