CAIRO (Reuters) – An Egyptian court on Tuesday postponed to April 6 the trial of Patrick Zaki, a rights researcher who had been studying in Italy and was accused of spreading false information in an article he wrote about Egypt’s Christians, a judicial source said.
Zaki was arrested in February 2020 when on a trip home from Italy and was released from detention in Egypt late last year.
Italy’s prime minister welcomed the decision to release him and said his government would closely watch the case.
The trial was postponed to allow for legal proceedings, the judicial source said, without giving further details.
“It’s an incredibly long wait for Patrick to finally have his freedom,” Amnesty International Italy spokesman Riccardo Noury told Italian news agency ANSA.
He said Zaki’s supporters should “accompany him in this long wait to what we hope will be the last hearing.”
(Reporting by Haithem Ahmed in Cairo and Giulia Segreti in Rome; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Edmund Blair)
