What steps did your friend take thus far? Did they try any of the steps here? [1][2]
Should your friend recover their data, encourage them to get a few external USB SSD drives and back their files up to them and unplug them. Even if they are unable to decrypt their files, they may wish to archive the .zaqi files to external drives in the event that the malware author is busted and a master key is obtained. This has happened with a few other malware tools.
[1] - https://www.pcrisk.com/removal-guides/22751-zaqi-ransomware
[2] - https://howtofix.guide/zaqi-virus-file/