Bologna cheers pardon of student arrested in Egypt

An Egyptian master’s student at the University of Bologna will return to Italy to graduate after he got a presidential pardon for writing a 2020 article on religious rights in the country.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overturned Patrick Zaki’s three-year prison sentence on 19 July, a day after it was handed down for his alleged spreading of false news about the lives of Coptic Christians in the country.

Bologna’s rector Giovanni Molari told the Ansa news agency that the pardon was “a moment of unexpected relief and great happiness” for the university. “We hope this is the end of more than three years of waiting and disappointed hopes,” he said.

Mr Zaki, who defended his thesis remotely because the Egyptian authorities forbade travel to Italy before his sentencing, told Ansa he would return to Italy “as soon as possible” and was thinking of going to Bologna to see colleagues at the university.

His case is one of a handful that have brought international attention to Mr Sisi’s crackdown on criticism from students and others.

Last July, Ahmed Samir Santawy, a master’s student at the Central European University, was also sentenced to three years by an Egyptian court on charges of spreading false news, linked to his research on women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

Mr Santawy also got a presidential pardon but remains under a travel ban. “I can’t pursue my academic career, and I can’t be with my partner in Belgium. I am not allowed to plan for my future because I don’t know if they will let me travel to start a PhD for example,” he told Amnesty International.

Concerns about the safety of students in Egypt were brought to the fore after the 2016 torture and murder of an Italian University of Cambridge student who was researching labour rights in the country, Giulio Regeni.

The case led to accusations that some universities had become “complacent” about the risks of fieldwork. Two sets of guidelines have since been developed to help staff handle the risks involved.

Mr Sisi, a retired general who was elected in 2014 after Egypt’s 2011 revolution, has been strongly criticised for torture and the disappearances of his political opponents. In a statement, a presidential council framed the pardons as part of reforms “towards the new republic”.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com