Italy breathed a sigh of relief after learning that Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sissi has pardoned 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 fake news. It is a case that had shocked the transalpine country because it recalls the tragic death of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in 2016 at the hands of four agents of the Egyptian secret services.
Zaki, 32, was studying for 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 arrested at Cairo airport during a trip home in February 2020. It happened after he published an article in which he portrayed his life in Egypt as a Coptic Christian and denounced violations of the rights of this important Christian minority, of which make up between 10 and 15% of the 105 million Egyptians. According to Human Rights Watch, during the detention he was assaulted, electrocuted and threatened. He spent 22 months in preventive prison.
The case has had such a repercussion 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 anger of Washington, the UN and Brussels, which have celebrated the pardon. The EU foreign affairs spokesman, Peter Stano, applauded a “positive progress” in relations between the EU bloc and Egypt. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, valued it as a “very important gesture” by the Egyptian president.
Zaki, who according to Reuters intends to return this Friday to Bologna, was not the only one pardoned, but also received the pardon the lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer, an important defender of human rights, and the lawyer of Ala Abdel Fatah, the best-known Egyptian political prisoner. Al-Baqer was arrested in 2019 during interrogations of his client.
The reasons that have led to these releases remain to be known. They occur with less than a year to go before the presidential elections, for which Al-Sissi 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.
Egypt’s ambassador to Italy, Bassam Rady, assured that Zaki’s pardon is a gesture of “personal affection” on the part of Al-Sissi towards the “depth and strength of the relations between Italy and Egypt”. A few months ago, in April, the two countries signed an important agreement to accelerate the export of liquefied natural gas from Egypt to Europe.
