An emergency court in Egypt has found a Christian rights activist guilty of circulating ‘false news’. He has now been sentenced to three years in prison, according to colleagues.
According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, EIPR, Patrick Zaki had been sentenced for an article he wrote about his lige as a Coptic Christian.
The court’s judgement is not appealable.
Zaki – who has since refuted the charge – has spent almost 2 years (22 months) in custody after being apprehended at Cairo airport in 2020 on his return from studying in Italy.
Hossam Bahgat, the EIPR’s executive director, has tagged the court’s decision a “travesty of justice” and has appealed to President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to annul it.
The Egyptian government has carried out what activist groups have labeled as a relentless crackdown on any form of disagreement since President Sisi led the military to overthrow his democratically-elected predecessor in 2013.
At least tens of thousands of government critics have been detained without restriant, according to reports.
It was said that Patrick Zaki had been studying at the University of Bologna for a master’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies at the when he returned to Egypt for a short family visit in February 2020.
Zaki’s lawyers have reported that he had been subjected to torture (with electric shocks), while being interrogated about his activism and the EIPR.
However, the Egyptian government has denied that its security forces torture detainees.
Prosecutors had eventually charged Zaki with “circulating false news inside and outside of the country”, on the grounds of an opinion piece he published on the Daraj news website in July 2019.
Zaki had pleaded not guilty to the charge at the beginning of his trial at the Emergency State Security Court in Mansoura on September 2021.
Three months after that, the emergency court ordered for his release on bail – a decision that was welcomed by the Italian government welcomed.
Zaki was however, not allowed to leave the country while his trial was ongoing.
He eventually graduated from Bologna University with a distinction last week, after defending his master’s thesis via video link.
