CAIRO. The hearing tomorrow morning in the trial of Patrick Zaki in Mansura, Egypt, will be decisive, with a sentence or at least the setting of a date to pronounce it. His principal lawyer, Hoda Nasrallah, confirmed this in these terms. “Tomorrow’s session is decisive because, if the prosecution authorizes the lawyers to attend, they will make their speeches and ask for a sentence to be issued,” the lawyer, head of the pool of lawyers who defends the student, told Ansa Egyptian of the University of Bologna.
If the sentence is not pronounced “just the same day, another date will be set (…) to render the sentence itself and conclude this trial,” added Hoda, contacted by telephone. Patrick, after 22 months of pre-trial detention in prison, was released on December 8 while remaining a defendant in his trial for “spreading false news inside and outside the country” based on his 2019 article on Christians in Egypt. persecuted by Isis and discriminated against by fringes of Muslim society. The maximum sentence for this type of charge is five years in prison.