“I have heard that from countries like Egypt, ‘if you give, you receive’,” Schlein said on Sunday, referring to a statement by Italian energy company Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi at a Forza Italia party convention in Milan on Saturday.
“I want to ask the government if the things that must be given in order to receive include impunity for the torturers and murderers of Giulio Regen,” she continued.
On Saturday Descalzi told Forza Italia officials and supporters that “Egypt has helped us by giving up its load this summer to send it to Italy to fill stockpiles.
“These are countries where if you give you receive.”
Schlein queried whether this was a method of diplomacy that Italy really should be pursuing.
“I ask the government if this is the path it intends to take as an energy strategy for Italy’s future,” she said in Treviso.
The problem did not concern only the lack of progress made in getting to the bottom of the torture and murder of the 28-year-old Cambridge doctoral student from the northe-astern Friuli region while he was in Egypt to conduct research into the politically sensitive issue of Cairo street seller unions, but also the release of Egyptian Bologna university student Patrick Zaki and human rights abuses in Egypt, she added.
“To move from dependence on the fossil fuels of Putin and Russia to dependence on the fossil fuels of other regimes is not the solution for this country, which instead has enormous untapped potential in clean, renewable, democratic energy,” she concluded.
ANSA
