An Egyptian researcher, Patrick Zaki, was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday for denouncing discrimination against Christians in Egypt, a verdict that prompted several human rights figures to leave the “national dialogue” created in the country to give speak to everyone.
Patrick Zaki was arrested after the hearing at the State Security emergency court in Mansoura, 130 kilometers north of Cairo, said Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. (EIPR), the NGO to which this human rights activist belongs.
The researcher was released in December 2021 after 22 months in preventive detention.
Amnesty International denounced “a scandalous verdict”, saying that “the image of Patrick being dragged out of the courtroom is terrifying”.
It is impossible to appeal after a verdict of a special court.
Several liberal opposition figures immediately announced that they would withdraw from the national dialogue, launched in early May by the government to discuss all the angry subjects less than a year from the presidential election.
Lawyer Negad El Borai felt that this sentence “makes useless” his presence at the national dialogue. “I apologize for this failure,” he wrote.
His colleague Mahienour El-Massry called for a “withdrawal” from “the farce of the national dialogue”.
Two other figures followed: the left-wing politician Khaled Dawoud, who said “freeze his participation because we cannot say that we dialogue when such verdicts are handed down”, and the lawyer Ahmed Ragheb, member of the commission of human rights of the national dialogue.
National Dialogue Coordinator Diaa Rashwan issued a statement on behalf of the forum on Tuesday calling on President Sissi for the “immediate release” of Patrick Zaki.
According to him, a presidential pardon “would add further confirmation of the president’s continued commitment” to “a positive climate for the success of the national dialogue”.
Mr. Zaki faced up to five years in prison for having published in 2019 an article on an online newspaper recounting a week of violations of the rights of the Copts, the largest Christian minority in the Middle East to which belong 10 to 15% of the population. 105 million Egyptians.
A specialist in gender issues, he was arrested in February 2020 for “terrorism” on his return from Italy, where he was studying at the University of Bologna.
In prison, Mr. Zaki, whose Senate in Rome voted to grant him Italian nationality, was “struck and tortured with electricity”, assure his defenders.
Far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said “our commitment to a positive solution to the case of Patrick Zaki has never stopped, it continues”.
Under autocrat Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), freedoms were restricted for intellectuals, but they have further diminished since Abdel Fattah al-Sissi came to power in 2014.
Egypt occupies the last ranks in the ranking of academic freedom in the world established by the Academic Freedom index, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China.
Since 2014, the authorities have been carrying out a ruthless repression against academics, but also journalists, artists, lawyers, trade unionists and political activists.
Hundreds of students and scholars have been arrested since 2013 for their Islamist ideas and a dozen researchers are in prison for their work, according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.
In 2016, the case of the young Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, found dead in Cairo with his body mutilated, had created a shock wave. Attached to the University of Cambridge, he worked on trade unions, a very sensitive subject in Egypt.
In 2022, the death in custody of the Egyptian economist Ayman Hadhoud aroused the ire of the United States.
Cairo, for its part, is promoting its new “human rights strategy”.
On Tuesday, authorities released the “Quarterly Human Rights Bulletin” in which they say they have legalized “216 churches and affiliated buildings” in the past three months to promote “freedom of worship”.
Despite these symbols, Coptic activists claim to be victims of discrimination, to build churches or access the public service.
07/18/2023 20:17:20 – Cairo (AFP) – © 2023 AFP