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WASHINGTON — The State Department called for the immediate release of Patrick George Zaki, a human rights researcher sentenced by an Egyptian court to three years in prison for spreading “fake news.”
The verdict Tuesday by an emergency security court in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura comes more than three years after Zaki was arrested in February 2020 at the Cairo airport during a visit from Italy, where he was studying at the University of Bologna. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the rights group where Zaki had worked, said he was tortured with electric shocks following his arrest.
Prosecutors later charged him with "spreading false news inside and outside of the country," an accusation linked to a 2019 online article Zaki wrote about being a member of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
Zaki, who spent 22 months in pretrial detention before his provisional release in December 2021, was taken back into custody following the verdict on Tuesday.
“We urge Egyptian authorities to release Mr. Zaki immediately, along with other prisoners currently detained on charges related to the exercise of fundamental freedoms,” a State Department spokesperson told Al-Monitor.
“We will continue to closely follow this and other cases in Egypt involving the exercise of freedom of expression and other fundamental freedoms,” the spokesperson added.
The verdict in Zaki’s case is final and not possible to appeal, but it still requires ratification by Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. On Tuesday, a group of more than 40 rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged Sisi to quash the verdict, which they said followed “a trial rife with due process violations.”
Zaki’s case has drawn widespread outrage in Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her government was committed to a "positive solution." Relations between the two countries were strained over the 2016 abduction and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, which Italian prosecutors blamed on a group of Egyptian security agents.
Several US lawmakers joined calls for Zaki’s release on Tuesday, including Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rights groups estimate tens of thousands of dissidents have been imprisoned since Sisi came to power in an overthrow of his democratically elected predecessor in 2013. Those jailed include prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, human rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer and blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim.
The Egyptian government denies holding political prisoners and says many of the activists, journalists and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood languishing in Egypt’s jails constitute a national security threat.
The Biden administration views Egypt as a key counterterrorism partner and important regional mediator. But human rights violations in the North African country have complicated the US relationship with Egypt under President Joe Biden, who during the campaign vowed “no more blank checks” for Sisi.
News of Zaki’s three-year sentence comes as the Biden administration faces a Sept. 30 deadline to decide whether to restrict a portion of Egypt’s annual military assistance over human rights concerns.
At $1.3 billion, Egypt trails Israel as the second-largest recipient of US military assistance each year. Congressional Democrats and rights advocates have argued that blocking weapons sales and a portion of Egypt’s annual assistance could incentivize rights reforms.
Last year, the Biden administration withheld some but not all of the security aid that Congress has conditioned on the Egyptian government carrying out certain human rights improvements.
US officials pointed to progress in Cairo’s rights record, including the launch of a human rights strategy, the creation of a national dialogue with opposition groups and the release of hundreds of political prisoners. At the time, monitoring groups said new arrests outpaced detainee releases.
