The most serious charges
against Bologna University student Patrick Zaki - subversive and
terrorist propaganda - have not been shelved and persist in the
ongoing trial in Egypt on the spread of fake news through an
online article, the head of the legal team representing the
Egyptian student detained since February 2020 in Cairo told
ANSA.
"The indictment was filed on all charges and there are more acts
that will be added in two photocopies", Hoda Nasrallah said
speaking on the phone.
She did not want to specify the maximum sentence risked for the
student.
The other "acts" are "articles", she added.
The lawyer spoke of "all charges" responding to a question on
whether the indictment only referred to the "promotion of fake
news in and out of the country" in an article on the persecution
of Christians in Egypt - as indicated by 10 NGOs including one
for which the researcher worked - or also for instigation to
protest, "ousting the regime", "use of violence" and "terror
crime" as repeatedly reported over the past few months by
judicial sources in Cairo.
In detail, the question was whether charges persisted in
connection with 10 Facebook posts on which 19 months of
preventive custody in jail were based before the indictment
announced on September 13.
A day later, at the end of the first hearing in which she had
requested and obtained access to the acts, the lawyer had been
unable to say whether the oldest and most serious charges had
been shelved.
Zaki risks up to 25 years in jail under those charges, according
to Amnesty International, or a life term, according to another
Egyptian legal source.
NGOs were only certain about the charge concerning the alleged
publication of fake news in an article two years ago on the
persecution and discrimination of Copts. Under the latter
charge, Zaki risks up to five years in jail which, if the
preventive jail term he has already served is included, would be
reduced to three years and five months.
The next hearing for the student has been scheduled on Tuesday,
September 28, in Mansura, the city on the Nile delta where he
was born 30 years ago. (ANSAmed).
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