A little more than a year after being arrested and charged with aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, three Al Jazeera journalists continue to languish in an Egyptian prison as they wait to appeal their sentences this Thursday.
Peter Greste, an Australian, and Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, are currently serving seven-year sentences. Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, is serving a 10-year sentence.
“The first of January marks the next milestone in the judicial process and we see this as the next available opportunity for the Egyptian authorities to correct the injustice that’s occurred,” Greste’s brother, Michael, said this week. “It is important that we continue to maintain the spotlight on the judicial process and ensure that it continues to be scrutinized.”
“As we count down the days to Jan. 1, the only decision that we expect the appeals court to find, and hope for, is that it will indicate its independence and confirm its integrity by overturning the previous sentence,” he said.
Family and colleagues maintain that the first trial was a shoddy and corrupt affair, arguing that the sentences handed down in July were the product of a state interested in punishing journalists in the employ of the then-pro-Muslim Brotherhood Al Jazeera.
“The first trial was full of flaws and controversy,” Perter Greste’s father, Juris, told the Associated Press. “We believe that the only decision that the Court of Cassation can make is to overturn the original verdict. Therein will be Egypt’s opportunity to demonstrate the integrity and independence of its appeals system.”
He added that he has “learned not to react to expectations and rumors and talk.”
“We will only be certain of anything when we can embrace Peter and, as I have said before, when we are at 30,000 feet in a civilian aircraft in direction to home,” he said.
Further, Fahmy’s fiancé, Marwa Omara, alleged that the prison sentences were the product of a “cold war” between Egypt and Qatar, the state behind Al Jazeera’s financial backing.
“It’s very obvious to everyone that it’s a political case. Mohamed is a pawn in a cold war between Egypt and Qatar, and he didn’t do anything, he didn’t commit any crime, there is no evidence against him and he is paying the price for doing nothing,” she said.
As a show of solidarity, some Al Jazeera employees held silent demonstrations Monday to protest the one-year anniversary of the convictions.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi reiterated recently that he will not interfere with the prison sentences, opting instead to maintain an apparently neutral stance. Egypt’s Court of Cassation will hear the journalists’ appeal on Jan. 1 and decide whether the original sentences will be upheld or if there will be a new trial.
Along with the now-year-long imprisonment of three Al Jazeera journalists, 2014 was a particularly dangerous year for journalists working abroad.
Sixty journalists have been killed this year to date, according to an annual report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, with deaths being attributed to conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and terrorist activity by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Separately, a 28-year-old journalist was condemned to death Christmas Day in Mauritania for writing a supposedly critical article about Islam and the caste system, Reuters reported.
