The third hearing in the trial of Patrick Zaki, the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna accused of spreading false information through journalistic articles and detained in prison for exactly 22 months, is held this morning in Mansura, Egypt on the Nile delta. . Patrick Zaki's lawyer, Hoda Nasrallah, has requested the acquisition of other documents to prove both an alleged illegality during the arrest on February 7, 2020 and the correctness of the article on the Copts underlying the trial. The hearing, after the intervention of the lawyer, was suspended after just 4 minutes. The Court has no credible hypotheses about the possible duration of the interruption.
"Well, well, thank you": raising his thumb, Patrick Zaki replied to an Italian diplomat who asked him how he was. The student answered from the defendants' cage shortly before the hearing in the old Mansura Palace of Justice. It was learned that the diplomat was able to speak to him briefly to represent the closeness of the Italian institutions and Patrick thanked for what Italy and the Embassy are doing for him. The Italian diplomat had also talked to Patrick's parents shortly before.
As announced by one of his lawyers, the hearing will be used by his pool of lawyers to present a defense brief prepared on the basis of the access to the documents obtained with the previous session, that of 28 September. The single judge of a State Security Court for minor offenses in Patrick's hometown, in addition to possibly replying to the memory during the session, will decide whether to update the hearing again or to pronounce a conviction or final acquittal. The 30-year-old was recently transferred from the Tora prison in Cairo, where he spent most of his pre-trial detention, to a prison in Mansura.
Two Italian diplomats and, at the request of the Italian Embassy, also from other countries were also in court to monitor the process as they had done before for all the renewal sessions of the pre-trial detention.
Patrick was arrested on February 7, 2020 on his return to Egypt for a vacation and the 19 months of custody were justified with allegations of subversive propaganda made through ten Facebook posts.
The indictment took place instead for "spreading false news inside and outside the country" on the basis of three articles written by Zaki, including one from 2019 on Christians in Egypt persecuted by ISIS and discriminated against by sections of Muslim society.
The researcher and activist faces up to five years in prison.
