Service for Italian student murdered in Egypt

A funeral service has been held for an Italian student whose body was found in Cairo on Wednesday bearing marks of torture, nine days after he went missing.

An image posted online after Giulio Regeni disappeared.

Friends and family attended the funeral service on Friday at an Italian church in Cairo. Security outside the chapel was high, with plainclothes intelligence officers and police patrolling the area.

Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old PhD candidate, was researching labour rights in Egypt when he disappeared on January 25, the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

He was found with multiple stab wounds, cigarette burns and other signs of torture and a "slow death" on a roadside on the outskirts of Cairo.

The priest presiding over the service emphasized that Regeni had been "seeking truth".