Cape Town - Three Al Jazeera journalists imprisoned in Egypt for nearly a year will get a chance to appeal their sentences in the new year.
The network’s producers Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed and correspondent Peter Greste were arrested on December 29 and accused of “falsifying the news”.
At the time, the Egyptian embassy in Pretoria said the journalists were arrested because they were not accredited with the country’s State Information Service. In June they were found guilty by an Egyptian court of conspiring with the ousted ruling Muslim Brotherhood in a trial widely derided by human rights organisation.
Greste and Fahmy were each sentenced to seven years in prison. Mohammed was sentenced to 10 for reportedly having a spent bullet in his possession at the time of his arrest.
Friday marked 300 days behind bars for the trio.
The new court date for January 1 has renewed hopes for their release.
“They are fine journalists, convicted on the basis of a weak investigation and a court case riddled with procedural flaws,” said Al Jazeera spokesman Osama Saeed. “We hope that the court date of 1 January 2015 means that the new year can herald a new chapter, with the release of our journalists and the betterment of press freedoms in Egypt.”
Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has also since said the journalists should have been deported rather than jailed.
“The verdict issued against a number of journalists had very negative consequences, and we had nothing to do with it,” he told Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm in July. “I wished they were deported immediately after their arrest instead of being put on trial.”
The trio are not the only journalists to fall foul of the Egyptian government. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over a dozen more – particularly those working for local outlets or publications seen as sympathetic to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood – have found themselves jailed on charges including disturbing the peace, demonstrating without permission, blocking a road, spreading chaos, and joining a group that aims to disrupt the law.
According to Reporters Without Borders, freelance news photographer Mahmoud Abu Zied has been in jail without trial or charge for over a year.
Abdullah al-Shami, a colleague at Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language channel, lost about 40kg on a hunger strike in prison.
He was released after 10 months.
Weekend Argus