Senator for life and Shoah survivor Liliana Segre: “I will be glad to meet with Patrick Zaki”

By Daniel Reichel

“If he has expressed this wish and I will be strong enough, I’ll be very happy to meet him. His release is wonderful news”. Speaking with Pagine Ebraiche, Senator for life and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre responded with affection to the request of Patrick Zaki, the right researcher detained in Egypt since February 2020, to meet her in the future. “His story impressed me very much. Twenty-two months in prison in Egypt and those constant postponements of his hearings. The fear dictated by the uncertainty of one’s destiny. He made me rethink my experience. Of course, there are many differences and comparisons cannot be made”, said Segre who survived Auschwitz. “However, I know the meaning of what Zaki said: fear of a door that opens when you don’t know if behind it freedom awaits you or the hand of the torturers”.
When the motion was passed in Parliament to ask the government to confer Italian citizenship on the young Egyptian, a student of the University of Bologna, Segre supported it with conviction. “I will always be present at least spiritually when it comes to freedom,” she said then. Now she reiterates the symbolic meaning of making Zaki Italian. “For me, we are all citizens of the world, but certainly giving them citizenship would still have value”.
Segre had called herself the young man’s ideal grandmother and she stressed the importance of fighting for his freedom. “His detention without trial is a sensational violation of human and civil rights”, she explained to Pagine Ebraiche.
Now that Patrick Zaki is free, many questions remain about his future. On February 1, he will have to return to court to answer the accusation of spreading false and harmful news for the state. He faces five years of detention. And there is another pending charge, that of a terrorist association. The hope is that the second accusation will fall, Italian newspapers say, and that the first will be given a sentence equal to or less than the 22 months already served in the Tora prison, south of Cairo.
In the meantime, he thanks Italy and all those who have committed themselves to his release. Including Senator Segre. “It filled me with pride to know that a person of her level and moral stature was interested in me”, he said to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera”. “I want to meet her. Absolutely. I hope this will happen as soon as possible”.