Verdict in Al Jazeera trial shows regime’s contempt for press freedom in Egypt

In this crossposting from The Conversation, academics Sarah Hynek and Andrea Teti argue that Peter Greste’s jailing came despite a total lack of credible evidence.

Three Al Jazeera English journalists have been convicted in the Cairo Criminal Court of spreading false news, threatening national security and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood – previously Egypt’s first democratically elected government now deemed a terrorist organisation.

The trial judge, Mohamed Nagy, handed Australian journalist, Peter Greste, and his Egyptian-Canadian colleague, Mohamad Fadel Fahmy, seven-year sentences in a maximum security prison. Egyptian Al Jazeera journalist Baher Mohamad was given an additional three years for being in possession of a spent bullet casing he picked up.

The “Al Jazeera Three” were tried with 20 other defendants – some of whom were students thought to be members of the Brotherhood – and other foreign correspondents, including the Dutch journalist Rena Netjes and British journalists Sue Turton and Dominic Kane, who were all tried in absentia and received ten-year sentences.