he three journalists
in Cairo have been
in jail for a year
now. We are
fighting it every
inch of the way. We
don’t know which
way it’s going to bounce. The first
trial, quite honestly, was just a
mockery of justice. You go through
the evidence that was shown, there
really was nothing there. Nothing
there at all.
What had they been accused of?
They had been accused of being
members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
that they actively pushed the Muslim
Brotherhood line to the detriment
of Egypt, that they broadcast lies
about Egypt - and all of this
equalled a terrorism charge. All of
which we refute at every level.
Peter Greste had been in the
country for ten days. He’d never
been to Cairo before. The few
reports he had done were all online.
You can see them. We’ve always
said to people: “Please, look at the
journalism. It’s there. We’re not
hiding anything.” Mohamed
Fahmy had been working for
everybody from the
New York Times
to CNN. He was a well known
journalist around Cairo. Baher
Mohamed – a younger journalist,
and well known to the Cairo press
corps – worked for the Japanese. I
think they were in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
As soon as the sentences were
handed down we appealed. The
trial is moving at warp speed,
compared to some of the political
trials that have been going on in
Egypt for years. So we’re grateful in
some way.
Do you see any way that it could
have been prevented at all from
your end? Could there have been
better safeguards? Or were they
just in the wrong place at the
wrong time – and, in a way, the
right target for the government?
Could we have done more? Of
course. In hindsight, we could have
just shut down the whole
operation. But these aren’t easy
questions. Coming up in Kenya now,
In 2013, three Al
Jazeera journalists
were arrested and
imprisoned by the
Egyptian government.
Mohamed Fahmy, Peter
Greste and Baher
Mohamed were convicted
of collaborating with
the MuslimBrotherhood
after the coup by
Egyptian President
el-Sisi. Al Jazeera’s
Head of Global
Newsgathering,
Heather Allan, talks
about the struggle to
free the three men and
the increasingly
dangerous world
journalists work in
T
JOURNALISM
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 1 2015
|
21
Do you
keep your
people
there? Or
do you
pull them
out?
“
”
JAILED
