Home » Patrick Zaki on trial: the accusations are also of terrorism

Patrick Zaki on trial: the accusations are also of terrorism

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The most serious charges against Patrick Zaki, those of subversive and terrorist propaganda, have not been archived and persist in the ongoing trial in Egypt on the dissemination of false news through an online article on minorities in Egypt. This is what emerges from a statement made to Ansa 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 what is the maximum penalty that Patrick risks.

Patrick Zaky’s latest appeal: “Enough, I’m innocent”. But the prosecution asks for five years

by Francesca Caferri

In short, the situation for the Egyptian student enrolled in the master’s degree in Gender Studies at the University of Bologna, detained for 19 months, is getting worse. Not comforting news four days before the next hearing, on September 28, in Mansura, the city on the Nile delta where he was born 30 years ago. 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 persecutions 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” terrorist crime “as evidenced by a paper spread several times in recent months by judicial sources to the In short, the question was whether the accusations linked to the ten Facebook posts – which Zaki never acknowledged – on which the 19 months of pre-trial detention in prison were based, culminating in the indictment announced on 13 September.

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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 the spreading of 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 ‘only’ a five-year prison sentence which, calculating the custody precautionary measures already suffered, would be reduced to three years and five months.

Patrick Zaki, Bologna returns to the streets with Amnesty International on the eve of the hearing


Shaath’s wife on Zaki: “Regime change of strategy”

“The fact that the trial against the young student of the University of Bologna has been started testifies to a change in strategy by the regime that sends opponents to trial more quickly, wanting to give the illusion that the judiciary is independent and that the inevitable condemnations are legitimate “. Céline Lebrun, wife of Ramy Shaath, thus frames the situation of Patrick Zaki who is approaching the second hearing of the trial against him. Ramy Shaath is the Egyptian-Palestinian activist in prison for over two years that the Egyptian Court of Cassation confirmed in the list of “individuals belonging to terrorist entities” last July.

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He is an activist for the rights of the Palestinians, and the parliamentary commission for human rights wanted to listen to his wife because the situation in Shaath “is reminiscent of that of Patrick Zaky”, said President Giorgio Fede (M5s). In yesterday’s hearing, Lebrun explained that her husband is currently being held in a “very small cell that he shares with 18-20 other inmates with only one small bathroom”. His wife, for the entire time of confinement, was able to speak to him only twice and visit him only once. For the rest, they communicate only by letter. “His detention is completely outlawed as more than two years have elapsed since his imprisonment and therefore this deprivation of liberty cannot re-enter the period of pre-trial detention which lasts up to a maximum of two years. Full support from the international community is required to ensure that all the situations of illegitimate detention, which unfortunately are numerous in Egypt, have finally come to an end “, Lebrun told the commission and Fede guaranteed” full support and solidarity “.

“Today I graduate, but Zaki is not here with me”

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