Egypt submits new evidence in Italian student death probe

Egypt's judiciary has submitted "new elements" in the investigation of the 2016 murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, prosecutors from the two countries announced Thursday.

"The Egyptian investigation team has submitted accounts and documents containing new elements," Attorney General Nabil Sadek of Egypt and his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Pignatone said in a joint statement.

They said the new elements covered "progress achieved by the company tasked with recovering recordings from metro stations in Cairo", without elaborating.

In January, Egypt authorised Italy to send experts to examine footage from surveillance cameras at a Cairo metro station to shed light on Regeni's final public movements before his disappearance.

Regeni, a PhD student, went missing in the Egyptian capital on January 25, 2015. His body was found days later, bearing torture marks.

Egypt has faced accusations that a member of its security services murdered the student, who was researching trade unions -- a sensitive topic in the country.

Cairo has denied those claims.

Rights groups accuse the Egyptian government of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of dissidents, which spiked after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and cracked down on his supporters.

The government denies such allegations.