By POMED –
At the latest hearing in the trial of researcher Patrick George Zaki on April 5, his lawyers challenged the Emergency State Security Court’s authority to hear his case.
- Zaki was arrested at Cairo’s airport more than two years ago while returning from his studies in Italy for a family visit and tortured during his time in detention. Last September, he was referred to trial before an unfair emergency court on bogus “spreading false news” charges over an article he penned about the struggles faced by Copts in Egypt. The state of emergency that provided for the functioning of such emergency courts came to an end the following month.
- Zaki’s defense team argued yesterday that according to Article 19 of the Emergency Law, he should be tried in a normal misdemeanor court rather than an emergency court, whose verdicts are unappealable. Otherwise, they called for the trial to be suspended until appeals from other cases related to Article 19 are resolved.
- Though Zaki was released from detention in December 2021 after 22 months behind bars, he remains under a travel ban. His lawyers requested that the court allow him to travel while it considers their arguments.
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