“It is a suspicion that we had immediately” that the accusations of subversive propaganda and terrorism against Patrick Zaki, the most serious, had been “frozen and not revoked”. However, “an excessive and unfounded optimism” had spread, which was corrected “by the lawyer who has put things right today.” This was stated by Riccardo Noury, spokesman for Amnesty International Italia, in view of the next hearing on September 28 against the Egyptian student, arrested in February 2020 at the Cairo airport.
After almost two years of administrative detention, a trial opened on September 14 with the new accusation of spreading false news concerning a 2019 paper on the persecution of the Coptic minority. “That trial goes on, while the terrorism charges have been suspended but they are still a sword of Damocles on Zaki”, recalled Noury, underlining that nothing excludes further developments in the accusations, also in light of the announcement “of the lawyer of others incoming papers of which, however, no more is known ».