ROME — The abduction of an Egyptian researcher has sparked serious concern in Italy, where authorities fear a repeat of the brutal murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni.
Patrick Zaki, a 27-year-old graduate student in gender and human rights studies at the University of Bologna, was arrested in Cairo in the early hours of Friday. The trip, his friend Sofia Selighini said, was a gift from his parents for finishing his exams. He had planned to stay for a week.
Zaki was queuing for passport control when an agent pulled him aside and took him to a private room, Wael Ghally, Zaki’s lawyer, told the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. He was then blindfolded and transferred to a secret location an hour’s drive from the airport, where he was allegedly beaten and subjected to electric shocks, according to Ghally.
“They didn’t use a rod but smaller cords, that way it wouldn’t leave marks [on his body]. Whoever did it is a professional and knows what he was doing,” Ghally said.
For the Italian authorities, the case bears a worrying resemblance to that of Regeni, an Italian student who was abducted, tortured and eventually killed by Egyptian authorities in 2016. His body was found in the streets outside Cairo nine days after he disappeared.
“Patrick is certainly not a terrorist” — Zaki’s friend Sofia Selighini
The case remains unsolved, something Italy blames on Egyptian authorities’ lack of cooperation. In November 2018, Italian prosecutors named five suspects for Regeni’s murder — all of whom are members of Egypt’s secret services — but Cairo has not responded to the Italian pressure to investigate. Regeni was 28 when he was murdered.
According to Zaki’s lawyer, Egyptian authorities started tracking Zaki — who also works with the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) — in September, amid protests against the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has overseen a widespread crackdown on political dissidents, including academics and activists.
The government routinely misuses counter-terrorism legislation to prosecute critics and deny them a fair trial, according to Amnesty International, which found that a special branch of the public prosecution responsible for investigating national security threats is increasingly “complicit in enforced disappearances, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture and other ill-treatment.”
Zaki, who left Egypt in August last year to study in Italy, faces charges of “incitement to protest without a permit,” “inciting to overthrow the state,” “running a social media account intent on … harming national security” and “broadcasting false news,” as well as “promoting terrorist acts,” AFP reported.
Giulio Regeni’s coffin is carried during his funeral in Fiumicello, Italy on February 12, 2016 | Diego Petrussi/AFP via Getty Images
“Patrick is certainly not a terrorist,” said Zaki’s friend and fellow researcher Selighini, describing him as an “excellent student” who had won an EU scholarship to study in Italy and planned to work in an NGO after graduating.
“As soon as we met, I remember we spoke about Giulio Regeni,” she recalled. Zaki had followed the case closely and was deeply saddened by it. “He, for sure, doesn’t like the repressive methods of the el-Sisi government, but only ideologically — Patrick is a convinced pacifist.”
The Egyptian interior ministry confirmed the arrest in a statement on Sunday, specifying that Zaki is an “Egyptian citizen.”
“They mean he’s not Italian,” said Domitilla Brandoni, the head of doctorate studies at the University of Bologna, where students have taken to the streets to protest Zaki’s detention. “For us Patrick is a student, period. The nationality does not matter. No one should be kidnapped and tortured because he expresses his political dissent,” she said.
For many of the students at the university, the situation is reminiscent of what happened to Regeni four years ago. Since 2016, students march on January 25 — the anniversary of his disappearance — to keep Regeni’s story in the public eye and demand answers from the authorities.
Speaking of Zaki, Brandoni said, “We ask the Egyptian government to free him immediately, to not persecute him or his family, to allow him to return to study in Italy and to open an investigation under international supervision.”
“Our government, with the European Union, must take immediate action against the Egyptian government to demand the immediate release of Zaki” — Peppe de Cristofaro, Italian undersecretary for education
Italy’s minister of universities and research, Gaetano Manfredi, said he was working alongside Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio “through diplomatic channels to find certain and transparent information and verify the respect of human rights.”
“Our government, with the European Union, must take immediate action against the Egyptian government to demand the immediate release of Zaki,” said Peppe de Cristofaro, undersecretary for education, saying the government was “well-founded” in its fear that the young researcher “is undergoing arbitrary and unjustified detention and that he is the new victim of violence and abuse by the security forces.”
The Regeni family’s Egyptian lawyer, Mohamed Lofty, also expressed serious concern about Zaki’s arrest.
“How do we still consider Egypt to be a safe country?” Erasmo Palazzotto, the president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the death of Regeni, wrote in a tweet. “The Italian government cannot continue to pretend nothing is happening with a country that continues to violate human rights.”