• Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian researcher who was studying in Italy, was arrested in February 2020 in Cairo.

  • He must be tried from this Tuesday for "spreading false news inside and outside the country", according to the NGO with which he collaborated.

  • In Egypt, several laws "give a very strong power to the authorities to suppress independent voices", analyzes Katia Roux, from Amnesty International.

He is to be tried on Tuesday for "spreading false news inside and outside the country", according to the NGO Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian researcher who studied in Italy and collaborated with this association, has been in prison since February 2020 in Egypt.

Marshal Al-Sisi's regime allegedly reproached him for the publication of an article on the Daraj site devoted to the Egyptian Copts.

Patrick Zaki is not the first researcher to be criticized for the dissemination of "false news" in the country.

How is this concept defined?

What uses do the Egyptian authorities make of it? 

20 Minutes

takes stock of the situation in the country with Katia Roux, playdoyer officer at Amnesty International France.

Amnesty International warns about the case of Patrick Zaki, but also denounces "state repression" which targets "suspected opponents".

Have other researchers been accused of spreading fake news?

Quite recently, there was the conviction of a master's student, Ahmed Samir Santawy, sentenced by a court to four years in prison.

His conviction is based solely on social media posts that criticized the situation in Egyptian prisons and denounced the authorities' mismanagement of the pandemic.

He himself denied having written them, but he was sanctioned anyway.

In 2018, Egypt passed new laws cracking down on cybercrime and the dissemination of “fake news”.

Do these laws define this concept?

No, that is precisely the problem.

Today the concept of "fake news" is not defined but it is used to silence critical voices.

The fact of criminalizing the dissemination of information by relying on concepts as vague as false information, false news, is completely contrary to the right to freedom of expression which is guaranteed by the Egyptian constitution but also by international law.

What do these laws allow?

They

give a very strong power to the Egyptian authorities to suppress independent voices.

Since 2018, the Egyptian state can block social media accounts and prosecute journalists or others

who reportedly published so-called fake news.

It also allows the authorities to treat anyone who has more than 5,000 online subscribers as media and, from there, to be able to prosecute them for publishing false news or inciting to break the law.

This threshold of 5,000 subscribers is easily reached ...

It really allows you to target just about everyone.

A person who has more than 5,000 subscribers and who posts a tweet that displeases the government or who comments on the pandemic and the failings of the management of the health crisis, to take the recent context, falls under this law. 

It also sends a signal.

Apart from people whose rights are violated,

this has an extremely deterrent effect on all those who are likely to speak up, express themselves online or take to the streets.

When you see that, for the slightest peaceful expression of a critical opinion, you can be so persecuted, I understand that you can think twice about taking up your pen or posting your tweet.

It's about sending a message, having that chilling and chilling effect and preventing any criticism from emerging.

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