Italy breathed relief after learning that Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi has granted a pardon to activist Patrick Zaki, a student at the University of Bologna, a day after he was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of spreading false news. This is a case that had shocked the transalpine country for remembering the tragic death of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in 2016 at the hands of four Egyptian secret service agents.
Zaki, 32, was studying an international Master’s degree in Gender Studies under the Erasmus Mundus exchange program at the University of Bologna and was a human rights researcher for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) when he was detained at Cairo airport during a flight home in February 2020. It happened after he published an article portraying his life in Egypt as a Coptic Christian and denouncing violations of his rights. a significant Christian minority, comprising between 10 and 15% of the 105 million Egyptians. According to Human Rights Watch, during his detention he was beaten, electrocuted, and threatened. He spent 22 months in pretrial detention.
The case has had such an impact in Italy that even the Italian Parliament voted to grant him citizenship, and during these three years, Italian diplomacy has not stopped working for his release. The sentence had also provoked the ire of Washington, the UN and Brussels, which have celebrated the pardon. The EU foreign spokesman, Peter Stano, applauded a “positive progress” in relations between the community bloc and Egypt. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, valued it as a “very important gesture” by the Egyptian president.
Zaki, who, according to what he told Reuters, intends to return to Bologna this Friday, was not the only winner, but also the lawyer Mohamed al Baqer, an important defender of human rights, and the lawyer of Ala Abdel Fatah, the best known Egyptian political prisoner, received pardon. Al Baqer was arrested in 2019 during interrogations of his client.
The reasons that have led to these releases remain to be known. They take place less than a year after the presidential elections, in which Al Sisi has not yet announced his intention to run. Also in the midst of a serious economic crisis and repeated criticism of the human rights situation in the country.
The Egyptian ambassador to Italy, Bassam Rady, assured that Zaki’s pardon is a gesture of “personal appreciation” by Al Sisi towards the “depth and strength of relations between Italy and Egypt.” A few months ago, in April, both countries signed an important agreement to accelerate the export of liquefied natural gas from Egypt to Europe.
