After the Senate, the Chamber also approved the motion asking the government to grant Italian citizenship a Patrick Zaki, the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna, in prison in Egypt since February 2020. A measure that may not change much for Zaki, who was arrested on his return to the country for a visit to his family on charges of «subversive propaganda and incitement to terrorism“. According to the Egyptian judiciary, he would have done so with posts on social media from an account that Zaki’s lawyers have always defined as a fake.
That of the Italian Parliament is a stance that fits into the European line of the protection of rights that passes through the fight against racism, also done by kneeling before matches, and for letters to the Hungarian government after the approval of the anti-LGBT law. The votes in favor of Montecitorio were 358. Only the Brothers of Italy chose abstention.
The document passed to the Chamber has the support of the signatures of 300 thousand citizens and as the first signatories Lto Quartapelle and Filippo Sensi of the Democratic Party and says that the government must undertake “to promptly initiate, through the competent institutions, the necessary checks in order to confer Italian citizenship on Patrick George Zaki”.
To this is added the need to «continue to monitor, with the presence in the courtroom of the Italian diplomatic representation in Cairo, the conduct of the trial hearings against Zaki and his conditions of detention; continue to support, in bilateral relations with Egypt and in all European and international fora, the immediate release of Patrick Zaki and of all prisoners of conscience: human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and political activists who ended up in prison just for exercising their fundamental rights in a peaceful way ”.
The granting of citizenship, according to the promoters, would be a way to protect Zaki. The parent company of Italia viva in the Chamber Maria Elena Boschi explained «We engage the Italian Government in this battle for the freedom of Patrick, unjustly detained in Egypt ». For Brothers of Italy, on the other hand, “this motion is counterproductive, if not downright deleterious, for the purpose of his release”.
Deputy Minister Sereni also expressed concern that the granting of citizenship could have negative effects on Zaki’s release. For Riccardo Magi, deputy of Più Europa, «asking that Patrick Zaki be an Italian citizen is a symbolic gesture and of political pressure towards Egypt ”which would be a signal for all those who are deprived of their rights.
For Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italia, the motion of the House must serve to obtain “a change of strategy” because caution and dialogue used so far have not been able to help Zaki. However, the government does not seem ready to change the line it has taken in recent months because prudence is needed for other fronts that are commercial and diplomatic.
However, Parliament’s commitment obliges us to take at least one step. He had already said that Liliana Segre in April at the time of the vote in the Senate. “There is something in Patrick Zaki’s story that he takes in particular, and that is remembering when an innocent is in prison. I have tried this too and I will always be present, at least spiritually when it comes to freedom ». The question is not just Patrick Zaki, exactly how kneeling is not just a gesture.
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