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Fahmy, a one-time reporter for Al-Jazeera television network, along with two journalistic colleagues, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, was sentenced Saturday to three years in prison after he and the others were found guilty of terrorism-related offences. Greste was not in court; he was deported to Australia in February under an Egyptian law that allows foreign nationals convicted of crimes to be sent back to their home country.

The threesome was accused in 2013 of spreading false news and assisting the now-illegal Muslim Brotherhood movement. At the time they were working for Qatar-based news broadcaster Al-Jazeera English. Fahmy was the broadcaster’s Cairo bureau chief. He and his colleagues have maintained their innocence throughout the long-running case, saying they were only doing their jobs as journalists.

The trial attracted widespread international criticism, but it also came at a time when the Egyptian government faced a serious challenge in the Sinai desert, where its troops have clashed with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood, following a series of bombings and assassinations.

Fahmy has argued that he and his colleagues were pawns in a geo-political conflict between Egypt and Qatar, which, according to the Egyptians, has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood and backed former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi before he was removed from office in a military coup in 2013. The Egyptian authorities also regard Al-Jazeera as little more than a propaganda arm for the Qatari government and the Muslim Brotherhood. After the coup d’etat, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi went after Al-Jazeera, accusing the network of fomenting dissent in Egypt. Fahmy, Greste and Baher Mohamed were among the Al-Jazeera journalists caught up in the crackdown.