It has been a year and a half since Patrick Zaki, 29, was arrested in controversial circumstances on February 7, 2020. The Egyptian student, who is also a human rights activist and who, at the University of Bologna, was pursuing a master’s degree European, ended up in prison with theaccusation of subversive propaganda and incitement to terrorism, according to some posts published on Facebook (although the account, according to the lawyers, was not his). For the first five months, the renewals of the pre-trial detention were fortnightly, while now the extensions are 45 days.
In Egypt, pre-trial detention can last up to two years.
“A year and a half of preventive detention without any kind of information and justice!”. On the Facebook page “Patrick free”, the appeal that, after all this time, the student can finally be released. “A harsh experience that disrupted his life with his friends and family and put his academic life on hold,” it is written. “Patrick has suffered a lot during this whole period, between torture suffered in the first hours of detention, the making indictments to create a case, l’abuse of pre-trial detention during the hearings and the continuation of his unjustified detention despite the lack of clarity of the charges against him. Between a cold winter and a very hot summer, Patrick suffers in his cell with almost non-existent resources and inhuman conditions of detention ».
Activists of the official campaign in favor of Patrick Zaki, on the Facebook page, explain that “in the last period, the Egyptian authorities have released many of the people arrested in circumstances similar to that of Patrick, which gave us a glimmer of hope for its release. Let’s just hope for a fair investigation, our faith in his innocence assures us that when this happens he will be released. But the fear remains, especially in the light of some arbitrary sentences handed down against many of the people detained, which is the fate we fear for Patrick ».
The hope is that of a “immediate and unconditional release Patrick so that he can come back to us soon to be with his family and friends, and to put an end to the injustice and torture he has suffered for so long ».
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