Patrick Zaki, new postponement to July 18: the judge does not appear in the courtroom

Per Amnesty Italia it is “the umpteenth proof of contempt for human rights on the part of the Egyptian judiciary”. In the courtrooms of Mansoura a new postponement has been decided for Patrick Zaki, given that the judge in charge of the trial did not appear at the hearing and everything was postponed to 18 July. To tell at Ansa it was Zaki himself at the end of the very brief hearing which was held with a substitute.

Zakian Egyptian student at the University of Bologna, is currently a free footbut always risks another five years in prison for the contents of one of his item. Formally, today’s hearing served only to deposit documents from the defence but, since it was a monocratic judge, as always there was the possibility of a sentence. Furthermore, for the first time since the beginning of the trial in September 2021, at the previous hearing on February 28, the lawyers of the researcher from the Bolognese Alma Mater were able to expose organic their defense, creating the expectation of a sentence already today.

The legal case of Patrick had begun with the arrest of 7-8 February 2020 and it has lasted for three years and three months, of which 22 have been spent in prison. The accusation of “dissemination of false news inside and outside the country” is based on an article written by the researcher in 2019 on an attack by ISIS and two cases of alleged discrimination against Copts, the Christians of Egypt. During the pre-trial period, between February 2020 and September 2021, Patrick had suffered the dripping of 18 hearings (however postponed nine times) in which extensions of his pre-trial detention were decided, spent almost entirely in the Tora prison in Cairo: the renewals, as required by law, were 15 days each in the first five months and then 45.