Difficult to tell the last two days. We spent hours of waiting, of anger, of frenzy, but in the end the joy of the most unexpected news arrived: President Al-Sisi pardoned Patrick Zaki.
We’ve spent the last three years keeping the spotlight on Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian researcher passionate about human rights and gender studies. We met his father and sister, we met his friends and embraced Reny, his future life partner. We discovered his passions, Bologna football first of all, and his fears. We have brought his story everywhere in Italy, in public places as well as in institutional salons. We have asked all the Italian governments that have followed one another in recent years to press President Al-Sisi. Now we wait for him to become a free man again.
We’ve spent the last few hours between phone calls, chats, messages, emails and translating information from Arabic to Italian and vice versa. The important thing was not to let go, follow every single ad, every single tweet. There was tension in the air: we knew the story couldn’t end like this, with a three-year prison sentence for publishing a newspaper article.
Today we are here to rejoice in the grace a Patrick Zaki it’s at Mohamed al-Baqerlawyer of the famous activist Alaa abdel Fattah, but tomorrow we will be back in the streets to ask that all the others be released too: #FreeThemAll is the hashtag that continues to circulate on the internet, relaunched by Egyptian activists.
Patrick Zaki should not have spent a single day in prison, none of the 22 months of preventive detention, none of the 14 months he has left to serve. Nobody! Because you can’t be arrested for expressing an opinionfor alleging discrimination. Patrick should not have received a pardon because he should never have been arrested or tried.
We are all here wondering if the decree that pardoned Patrick will also remove his name from the black list that still keeps him in his country; we are waiting to understand if he will return to being a truly free man. But even more we are here to ask ourselves what led to this decree in these hours, what prompted President Al-Sisi to take this decision. Soon to say, but it certainly won’t take long to find out.
Cover photo ANSA/FRANCESCO ARRIGONI