Zaki condemns, Meloni: ‘The government’s commitment continues’

The opposition is pressing the executive, while a note arrives from Palazzo Chigi in which the premier Giorgia Meloni assures: “Our commitment to a successful solution of the case of Patrick Zaki it never stopped, he continues, we still have faith”. The three-year prison sentence of the Egyptian activist shakes politics. Elly Schlein he speaks of a “very serious injustice” and calls for mobilization “to reaffirm the reasons for the law and ask for its release”.

Not only that: the dem secretary brings up the government by asking that the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, “come and report to the Chambers”. The same request is made by the M5S through the group leader Francesco Silvestri: “It is a very serious fact on which Minister Tajani must come and report immediately to tell us what the government’s next actions will be. Our country cannot accept a sentence of this type and has a duty to do everything in its power to prevent a boy who has already suffered numerous and profound injustices from suffering further ones”.

The accusation addressed to the executive is that of not having done enough to avert the verdict arrived today from Egypt: three years in prison. Moreover: Laura Boldrini accuses the Prime Minister of having “a weakness for the autocrats of the other side of the Mediterranean”. The reference of the dem deputy is to the relations between the premier and the Egyptian president Al Sisi. “For Meloni and Tajani, who have also been fooled about the Regeni case, he is a reliable interlocutor, for us he is a criminal with whom our country should cease all relations”, it adds. Elisabetta Piccolotti of the Green and Left Alliance. Angelo Bonelli he requests that Italy recall the ambassador from Egypt and dusts off the motion, voted in parliament two years ago now, which asked the government to confer honorary citizenship on the young activist. “We asked for Italian citizenship, but nothing was done,” he insists Philip Sensideputy dem.

It also calls the executive into question Charles Calanda. “The government – he says – must take every useful initiative to ensure that full respect for the person and rights of Zaki is monitored in Egypt”. Ivan Scalfarottosenator of Italia Viva, who urges the government to make the indignation of our institutions and Italian public opinion heard “loud and clear in Cairo”.

Zaki had come under fire from the Egyptian authorities while he was attending a master’s degree at the University of Bologna. Upon hearing the news of the sentence, a demonstration was immediately called in the city to demand the release of the young activist; while the governor of Emilia Romagna Stefano Bonaccini speaks of “terrible news” and adds: “Now more than ever we will continue to ask for his release, so that he can return to Bologna. The government does the same, acting with the Egyptian authorities”. “Patrick don’t give up, Bologna is with you “, comments the mayor Matthew Lepore, who assures that, together with the city’s university, he will undertake “every initiative towards the Italian government to request its release and full respect for its rights in Egypt”.