This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/world/middleeast/egyptian-court-convicts-3-journalists.html

The article has changed 12 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Egyptian Court Convicts 3 Al Jazeera Journalists on Terrorism-Related Charges Egyptian Court Convicts 3 Al Jazeera Journalists
(about 1 hour later)
CAIRO — Three journalists working for Al Jazeera were convicted Monday by an Egyptian court and sentenced to seven years each in prison for conspiring to broadcast false news in order to destabilize Egypt. CAIRO — A judge on Monday convicted three journalists of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false reports of civil strife in Egypt.
The journalists for the network’s English-language channel — Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian who has previously worked for CNN and The New York Times; Peter Greste, an Australian who has previously worked for the BBC; and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian who has worked for other international news organizations — have been in jail since December. Two of the journalists were sentenced to seven years in prison, and the third was given 10 years, the three additional years apparently for his possession of a single bullet. The case has drawn condemnation from international rights groups and Western governments because there was no publicly available evidence that the journalists had either supported the Brotherhood or broadcast anything inaccurate.
Prosecutors accused the three journalists of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false reports of civil strife in order to bring down Egypt’s military-backed government. But the prosecutors have not publicly disclosed any evidence that the journalists either conspired with the Brotherhood or broadcast false news. In a potentially embarrassing turn for the Obama administration, the verdict came a day after Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo in a show of renewed partnership with the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former general who led the military takeover here last summer. Declaring that the Egyptian president “gave me a very strong sense of his commitment” to “a re-evaluation of human rights legislation” and “a re-evaluation of the judicial process,” Mr. Kerry expressed confidence that Washington would quickly resume the $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Egypt that the administration had partially suspended after the takeover.
Mr. 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. The three journalists convicted on Monday are respected professionals who were reporting for Al Jazeera’s English-language network at the time of their arrest and who had previously worked for established international news organizations. Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian citizen of Egyptian descent, previously worked for CNN and The New York Times; Peter Greste, an Australian, previously worked for the BBC and had spent only a few days in Egypt at the time of his arrest; and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, previously worked for the Japanese news organization The Asahi Shimbun.
After the verdict was announced, Mr. Fahmy, who was in a cage in the courtroom, clung to the bars as the police dragged him away by force. He tried without success to prevent other prisoners from chanting so he could shout to his family as he was taken out of the courtroom. All three have been in jail since their arrest in December after a raid on Al Jazeera’s makeshift studio in a Marriott hotel, and they have been described in the state-run and pro-government Egyptian news media as “the Marriott cell.”
Ambassadors from Britain, Canada and Australia, noting that they had seen no evidence of the men’s guilt, said the trial procedures were flawed and promised to work for the release of the Al Jazeera journalists. Rights advocates have described the charges as farcical. Mr. Mohamed received the additional three years for possession of a weapon; Al Jazeera said that referred to a single spent bullet that Mr. Mohamed had recovered as a souvenir at a protest. Mr. Greste is not a Muslim and had spent little time in the Arab world before his arrest. Mr. Fahmy, who said in court that he was a “liberal” who drinks alcohol, personally participated in a march calling for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last June and then another demonstration to show support for the new military-backed government.
Al Jazeera, which is based in Doha, Qatar, reacted angrily to the convictions. When asked by the court to screen the allegedly false news reports obtained from the defendants’ laptops, prosecutors showed images that included Mr. Greste’s family vacation, horses grazing in a pasture in Luxor, Egypt, and a news conference by the Kenyan police that Mr. Greste had covered in Nairobi.
“This is a shocking verdict,” said Mostefa Souag, the acting director general for Al Jazeera, in an interview on the network shortly after the court’s decision was announced. “I don’t think it has anything to do with justice.” At the time of the arrests, street protests and civil strife were common enough in Egypt that such broadcasts would have been far easier to film than to fabricate.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said the sentences had been imposed even though “not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges.” Judge Mohammed Nagi Shehata, who led a panel of three and wore sunglasses throughout the trial, announced the verdict and sentences without explanation.
“At no point during the long drawn out ‘trial’ did the absurd allegations stand up to scrutiny,” the statement said. “There were many moments during the hearings where in any other court of law, the trial would be thrown out. There were numerous irregularities in addition to the lack of evidence to stand up the ill-conceived allegations.” Several students were also convicted and sentenced along with the journalists, apparently on charges that they had collaborated with the journalists to generate inflammatory news reports of student protests against the takeover.
“There is no justification whatsoever in the detention of our three colleagues for even one minute,” the network’s statement added. “To have detained them for 177 days is an outrage. To have sentenced them defies logic, sense and any semblance of justice.” Inside the metal cage where defendants are held during Egyptian trials, the accused students immediately erupted into defiant songs and chants, proclaiming that their faith would overcome and denouncing the police as thugs. Mr. Greste looked down in dismay and ran his fingers through his hair. Mr. Fahmy angrily tried to quiet the students so that he could shout across the room to his mother, brother and fiancée, but his voice could not be heard. He clung to the bars as police officers pulled him away by force, dragging him back to his cell.
Prosecutors last week released Abdullah Elshamy, a journalist working for Al Jazeera’s main Arabic-language network who had gone on a hunger strike, because of his deteriorating health. “There is no hope in the judicial system,” Mr. Fahmy’s mother, Waffa Basiouni, wailed tearfully. “They give him seven years with no evidence — if they had evidence, how many years would they give him?”
The three journalists convicted on Monday are experienced and highly regarded professionals, which has helped focus international attention on their plight. The defendants may appeal the verdict, but the process could take years.
Outside the courtroom, the British, Australian and Canadian ambassadors all denounced the conviction as a blow to freedom of the press, and all pledged diplomatic pressure to free the imprisoned journalists.
“There is no incriminating evidence with regard to the charges and there were multiple procedural shortcomings,” David Drake, the Canadian ambassador, said. “Therefore, we do not understand this verdict.”
Amnesty International said in a statement that the group considered all three journalists to be “prisoners of conscience.” It was “a dark day for media freedom in Egypt, when journalists are being locked up and branded criminals or ‘terrorists’ simply for doing their job,” Philip Luther, the group’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “The verdict provides further evidence that Egyptian authorities will stop at nothing in the ruthless campaign to crush anyone who challenges the official narrative, regardless of how questionable the evidence against them is.”