Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison on Monday for allegedly spreading false news and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, verdicts that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called “draconian” and “chilling.” Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images

When an Egyptian criminal court judge sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to prison terms of seven to 10 years on Monday, he sent a warning shot to anyone reporting in the country: Be wary of challenging the government’s narrative. But for thousands of other detainees caught up in a crackdown on dissent that began last summer, no warning shot was needed. Human rights groups estimate that police forces have detained at least 16,000 people for political reasons since the military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood–led government in July 2013. Among them are former President Mohamed Morsi, a high-ranking Brotherhood member and Egypt’s first democratically elected leader; members of his executive staff; the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader and other top officials; and thousands of anonymous activists and protesters. The Jazeera sentences, which prosecutor Hisham Barakat described as a “deterrent verdict,” prompted widespread condemnation from human rights groups and Western governments.

A warning to all journalists that they could one day face a similar trial and conviction. Mohamed Lotfy Amnesty International

Peter Greste, an Australian; Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian; and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, were each given seven-year sentences for allegedly spreading false information and collaborating with the Brotherhood. Mohamed was sentenced to an additional three years for possessing a spent bullet casing he picked up from the ground at a protest. The United Kingdom and the Netherlands — home to journalist Rena Netjes, who was sentenced in absentia for meeting with an Al Jazeera reporter — both summoned their Egyptian ambassadors in protest, and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lynne Yelich wrote on Twitter that she would be contacting the Egyptian foreign minister to “express Canada’s concern.” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he spoken with newly elected Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the former defense minister and military intelligence chief who brought down Morsi, to tell him Greste is innocent. In addition to Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed, four Egyptian defendants were sentenced to seven years, and 11 other defendants, including six Al Jazeera journalists, were sentenced in absentia. Mohamed Lotfy, an observer with Amnesty International, said the sentences were “a warning to all journalists that they could one day face a similar trial and conviction.” The defendants can appeal their verdicts, and Sisi has the power to pardon them, but among close observers of Egyptian politics, there seemed to be little hope for a speedy change to the rulings or to the larger environment of political repression.

Return to status quo?

Many noted that the verdicts came the day after a brief but high-profile visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who signaled that the United States was eager to resume the strategic relationship and military aid that characterized the rule of Morsi’s predecessor, longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, who was brought down in the 2011 uprising. Kerry criticized Monday’s verdicts as “draconian” and “chilling,” but Sisi gave little indication that the foreign protests mattered. In remarks on Tuesday, he said he would not interfere with the judiciary. While foreign outcry has characterized the reaction to the Jazeera trial, Western politicians and journalists outside Egypt have paid less attention to the dizzying series of verdicts that have been handed down en masse for dissidents and Brotherhood members — hundreds of them sentenced to death or life in prison — by Egypt’s lower courts. Such verdicts, according to human rights activists, are often rendered after trials that feature even less evidence than the proceedings that convicted the Jazeera journalists. Some, including mass death sentences, have come after trials that have lasted just hours, with no lawyers present for the defendants. Meanwhile, no police officers have been found guilty of any crimes of violence since Morsi’s violent ouster, which involve the brutal clearing of several large sit-ins and more than 1,000 deaths. On Saturday an Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against the leader of the Brotherhood and 182 supporters in a mass trial related to violence that broke out against Christian communities in the southern governorate of Minya after Morsi’s fall. The verdicts can be appealed, but they reveal how segments of a judiciary that was once held up as one of the few bastions of independent opposition to Mubarak have now, in the view of many analysts, run amok with apparent carte blanche to harshly sentence Islamists and regime opponents. “Those rulings are a continued farce,” Egyptian human rights activist and lawyer Gamal Eid told Reuters. “And the state is still insisting that the judiciary is independent. I don’t know how we can believe that when we see rulings like that. It is against logic and common sense. It is a joke.”

A fractured state