Three al-Jazeera English journalists jailed in Egypt have been sent for retrial after a New Year’s Day appeal hearing in Cairo, dashing their families’ hopes of a release on bail, but opening the door for two of the trio to be deported.



After more than a year in jail, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed now face several further months behind bars, with no date for a new hearing set. Fahmy and Greste could still be deported under the terms of a recent presidential decree that allows foreign nationals to serve sentences in their home countries, but President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s office did not respond to a request for comment about his intentions.

The hearing spanned two sessions that lasted for a total of less than 30 minutes, with both the defendants and reporters barred from entry. Defence lawyers were given just minutes to explain their clients’ innocence, with one calling the prosecution’s evidence “laughable”.

After the verdict, the families and lawyers of the detainees reacted with disappointment, having earlier expressed hope of a conditional release.

Greste’s mother, Lois, was initially lost for words, saying simply: “I can’t believe it.” His father, Juris, said: “I’m shocked, I’m shocked.”

Later, Lois said: “We need some time to process this. It is not as positive as we had hoped for.”

In the corridor nearby, Fahmy’s brother Adel said Mohamed “will be very disappointed. We knew a full release was impossible, but we had high hopes of a release on bail.”

#AJ3: Last year's trial was in a prison. Today's is in the centre of town, at the much sleeker Court of Appeal pic.twitter.com/oCe7AF19Q6 — Patrick Kingsley (@PatrickKingsley) January 1, 2015

Greste had been in Egypt for a fortnight when he was arrested in late December 2013 along with his two colleagues, as well as several students accused of aiding them in a terrorist plot. They were convicted in June 2014 of aiding terrorists, belonging to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, spreading false information, and undermining Egyptian national security.

Outside Egypt, observers saw the case as a politicised attack on freedom of expression that ignored due process, and formed just one part of a rampant crackdown on all forms of opposition in Egypt. But within the country, where the coverage of AJE’s Arabic sister channels has strongly favoured the Brotherhood, many government supporters saw the journalists as a legitimate target.

With no foreign passport, Baher Mohamed’s only remaining hopes of freedom are in the retrial, with foreign observers expressing hopes that it would be fairer than the first trial. “We had very serious concerns about the first trial,” said the Australian ambassador to Cairo, Ralph King, after emerging from the Cairo courtroom. “So it is very encouraging that a retrial has been ordered but still we maintain that journalists never be on trial.”

But Fahmy’s family said they had lost faith in the legal process after an initial trial that used, among other incongruous items, a song by the Australian singer-songwriter Gotye as evidence. “This is really bad, we were hoping they would be released,” said Fahmy’s fiancee, Marwa Omara. “The only way out now is the deportation law. We hope that the prosecution will approve our request to transfer Mohamed to Canada.”

While the Grestes have portrayed the trio’s plight as one solely connected to freedom of speech, the Fahmys see them as pawns in a cold war between Egypt and Qatar, the owners of al-Jazeera and key supporters of the Brotherhood. Relations are gradually improving between the two countries, culminating in Qatar’s closure of the Egypt-based wing of al-Jazeera last month, raising hopes that the trio might be released in a reciprocal gesture.

“I hope things keep on getting better between Egypt and Qatar as it’s totally unfair that these poor journalists should be subject to their disagreement,” said Adel Fahmy, as he left the courthouse.

Egyptian officials publicly maintain that their judiciary is strictly independent of any executive authority, and say the case is not politicised. The trio are among at least 16 journalists and up to 40,000 political prisoners currently detained in Egypt.

In a statement, an al-Jazeera spokesman said: “The Egyptian authorities have a simple choice – free these men quickly, or continue to string this out, all the while continuing this injustice and harming the image of their own country in the eyes of the world. They should choose the former.”

Additional reporting: Manu Abdo