On December 29, 2013, Australian Al Jazeera reporter Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed were arrested in Cairo and charged – falsely according to their employer Al Jazeera – with spreading false news and aiding the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The journalists were in Egypt reporting on the aftermath of the forced removal the previous July of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected head of state in Egyptian history. The Muslim Brotherhood supported Morsi and had recently been listed as a “terrorist” organization. For their alleged crimes, Greste and Fahmy were later sentenced to seven years in prison while their colleague Mohamed was sentenced to 10.
On the one-year anniversary of their incarceration, the network reports that an appeal will be filed questioning the original trial which Al Jazeera has always maintained was “flawed.” Egypt’s Court of Cassation, before which the appeal will be heard, can choose to dismiss the case, uphold the original verdict or order a new trial.
Though he has declined to issue a pardon, current Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi made statements to France 24 in July that he would have preferred the journalists be deported rather than imprisoned and that, had he been president at the time of the arrests, that’s the action he would have taken. He also indicated that a pardon was still a possibility.
According to Al Jazeera, the US, UK and Australian governments, as well as 150 rights groups including Amnesty International, have all called for the journalists’ release.