Italy on Sunday called on Egypt to release a young Egyptian researcher and activist based at Bologna University, saying it had reason to believe the security forces had tortured him.
The incident has revived painful memories of the 2016 disappearance and murder of an Italian researcher in Cairo, a case for which the Italian authorities are still seeking answers.
Patrick Zaky, 27, a graduate student at Bologna, was detained late on Friday as he arrived to visit his family.
He was held on a warrant issued in September last year after he left to pursue his studies, said the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent rights organization where he is a researcher.
They said he had been charged with “harming national security” and “broadcasting false news” — and that he had been beaten and electrocuted by security forces.
In a statement on Sunday, Italian Undersecretary for Education Peppe De Christofaro expressed “great concern” for Zaky.
He had a “well-founded fear that the young Egyptian researcher ... is currently suffering arbitrary and unjustified detention and that he is a new victim of violence and abuse from the Egyptian security forces,” de Christofaro said.
He called for other EU states to join Italy in pressing Egypt to release him.
Everything had to be done to protect Zaky’s safety and “avoid a repetition of unacceptable scenes of torture,” he said.
Italy’s reaction is in part informed by the January 2016 disappearance of 28-year-old Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, where he was carrying out research on Egyptian trades unions. His badly mutilated body was found in a suburb of the city a few days later, bearing the marks of torture.
Bologna University, where Zaky received a grant to study for a master’s degree, has already set up a crisis cell to help him.
Egyptian authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement in Regeni’s death, but the affair has soured relations between the two countries.
Zaky on Saturday made an appearance before an Egyptian prosecutor in his home town of Mansoura, in the north of the country, judicial and security source said.
He faces charges of “incitement to protest without a permit,” “inciting to overthrow the state,” “running a social media account intent on ... harming national security,” “broadcasting false news” and “promoting terrorist acts,” the sources said.
He is being held for 15 days for questioning.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS