Mansura, September 28, 2021 – Second hearing for Patrick Zaki, the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna in prison in Egypt for almost 20 months. Today in Mansura, on the Nile delta, the trial will resume later the first hearing on 14 September. The student will appear before the State Security Court for minor (or emergency) crimes of Mansura his hometown.
Patrick Zaki, his teacher: “We need to do more”
In the new wing of the old Justice palace, it is expected that within a session of several hours many dozen cases will be examined starting by mid-morning. Last time the update to today, after a few minutes’ hearing, was announced around 15 local and Italian time.
Given the type of court, it is assumed that the accusation against him which will be debated today on the basis of three journalistic articles is that of “dissemination of false news inside and outside the country”. A crime punished with a maximum of five years in prison. The court can issue a final judgment at any hearing. However, it has already been confirmed by a student lawyer that the accusations of “undermining national security” and of instigating protests, “the overthrow of the regime”, “to the use of violence and terrorist crime “: the crime hypotheses based on the ten posts on Facebook of controversial attribution.
These are crimes that risk 25 years in prison, according to Amnesty International, or even life imprisonment, Egyptian judicial sources have argued. As always happened in the hearings for the renewal of pre-trial detention, it is also foreseeable today that an Italian diplomat will be present at the Court as part of an EU procedural monitoring involving non-European countries such as Canada.
” The second hearing of Patrick Zaki’s trial is scheduled for today. There is enormous concern because the most serious accusations, those of subversive and terrorist propaganda, could still be standing ”. So he wrote Amnesty Italia on his official Twitter account.
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