(ANSAmed) - MANSURA, 29 NOV - The eighth hearing of the trial in which Patrick Zaki risks up to five years in prison for allegedly spreading fake news opened Tuesday in Mansura, Egypt.
    The Egyptian student of the University of Bologna, at the indication of his lawyers following the previous hearing on September 27, said he expected to be able to "present our defense" at today's hearing.
    Based on the Egyptian procedure - today's hearing should be the last of the trial - a sentence should be pronounced and the motivations published, according to the timing decided by the judge, but not today, a well-informed source in Mansura said.
    The Egyptian researcher and human rights activist, who has been free since December 8 after 22 months in pre-trial custody on more serious charges connected to 10 Facebook posts but informally shelved, has been tried by a Court of State Security for minor crimes (or emergency crimes) in his native city on the Nile Delta.
    Zaki is on trial over an article published in 2019 in which he defended Copts, a Christian minority in Egypt, stressing the bloody persecutions carried out by ISIS over the previous years and two cases of social and judicial discrimination. Although free, the 31-year-old researcher in gender studies cannot leave Egypt.
    In Mansura, as in all previous hearings to extend pre-trial custody and of the case, the trial should be attended by diplomats from Italy and other countries as part of a European monitoring initiative concerning trials relevant to the respect of human rights. Attendance regularly takes place at the invitation of the Italian embassy in Cairo and often concerns representatives of the EU, US and Canada. The hearing is considered by Amnesty International as an occasion to verify Egypt's "willingness" to open a "new phase" in relations with Italy. (ANSAmed)