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An Egyptian court Monday convicted three Al Jazeera journalists of “conspiring to broadcast false news in order to destabilize Egypt,” David D. Kirkpatrick reports in The New York Times.
Peter Greste, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed received sentences of seven years each, and Mohamed “was sentenced to three additional years in prison for what Al Jazeera has said was possession of a single spent shell casing he had taken as a souvenir,” Kirkpatrick reports.
Fahmy, Greste and Mohamed on trial in May. (AP Photo/Hamada Elrasam, File)
The trial was unusual: The prosecution’s evidence “included videos of trotting horses from Sky News Arabia, a song by the Australian singer Gotye, and a BBC documentary from Somalia,” Patrick Kingsley reports for The Guardian.
“There is no justification whatsoever in the detention of our three colleagues for even one minute,” Al Jazeera English managing director Al Anstey said in a statement. “To have detained them for 177 Days is an outrage. To have sentenced them defies logic, sense, and any semblance of justice.”
The court also convicted three journalists in absentia and sentenced them to 10 years, Kingsley reports: Sue Turton and Dominic Kane of Britain and Rena Netjes of Holland.
Thank you for your support to #freeajstaff. Keep it going. We will continue with resolve till Peter, Baher and Mohamed are free.
— Al Anstey (@AlAnsteyAJ) June 23, 2014
