Home » Zaki, the lawyer: among the new accusations also incitement to terrorism

Zaki, the lawyer: among the new accusations also incitement to terrorism

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CAIRO. The most serious allegations against Patrick Zaki, those of subversive and terrorist propaganda, have not been dismissed and persist in the ongoing trial in Egypt on the dissemination of false news through an online article. This is what emerges from a statement made by the principal lawyer of the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna in prison in Cairo. The indictment took place with all the charges and there are other documents that will be added in two photocopies, ”said Hoda, speaking on the phone, without however specifying the maximum penalty that Patrick risks.

The other “acts” are “articles”, she merely specified. The lawyer spoke of “all the accusations” by answering the question of whether the indictment took place only for “spreading false news inside and outside the country” in an article on the persecution of Christians in Egypt – as indicated by 10 NGOs between which the one for which the researcher worked – or even for incitement to protest, “to the overthrow of the regime”, “to the use of violence” and to “terrorist crime” as shown by a paper spread several times in recent months by judicial sources in Cairo. In short, the question was whether the accusations linked to the ten Facebook posts on which the 19 months of pre-trial detention in prison were based, culminating in the indictment announced on 13 September. Even the next day, at the end of the first hearing in which he had requested and obtained access to the documents, the lawyer had not been able to specify whether the old and more serious accusations – those that according to Amnesty make him risk 25 years in prison or even the life sentence, according to another Egyptian legal source – had been dismissed. For certain, only that of spreading false news was given by the NGOs with the article of two years ago on the persecution and discrimination of Copts: an accusation that makes him risk a five-year prison sentence which, calculating the pre-trial detention already suffered , would be reduced to three years and five months. The next hearing for Patrick is set for Tuesday 28 September, also in Mansura, the city on the Nile delta where he was born 30 years ago.

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Meanwhile, Bologna returns to the streets to ask for the release of the Egyptian student from the University of Bologna who has been in prison in Egypt for over a year and a half. The new mobilization consists of a garrison organized by Amnesty International Italia in Piazza Maggiore on the afternoon of September 27 (6.30 pm), on the eve of the new hearing in the trial which, after 19 months of pre-trial detention, sees Patrick Zaki accused for an article written on the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt. “The day before the next hearing – explains Amnesty announcing the appointment – we want to go back to the Piazza together with the University, the Municipality, the associations, the towns and citizens of Bologna who have never stopped clamoring for freedom for Patrick Zaki . Patrick’s trial began on September 14th and already that same evening we were in Piazza Maggiore to show him once again that Bologna is with him and will be until the end of this ordeal ». The first hearing of the trial, at the Mansura court, lasted just over five minutes and was updated to September 28: the student will remain in prison until that date. “On Monday 27 September we will be in the streets to ask the government to immediately grant Italian citizenship to Patrick and to do everything in its power to put pressure on Egypt to be released as soon as possible”. The presidium is expected, among others, the mayor Virginio Merola, the spokesman of Amnesty in Italy Riccardo Noury, the writer and actor Alessandro Bergonzoni.

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