Egypt court orders retrial of Jazeera journalists

Egypt's top court Thursday ordered a retrial of three Al-Jazeera reporters whose imprisonment on charges of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood triggered global outrage, but kept them in custody pending a new hearing.

Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed of the broadcaster's English service were detained in December 2013 for spreading false information.

Greste and Fahmy each got seven years, and Mohamed was jailed for 10.

The verdict set off an international backlash against the Egyptian government’s crackdown on news media freedom and political dissent. It also put the White House in the difficult position of appearing to align itself with an authoritarian ruler less than three years after President Obama backed the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak.

"The Court of Cassation has accepted their appeal and ordered a retrial," Greste's defence lawyer Amr Al-Deeb said after a hearing lasting just 30 minutes.

Hopes for the journalists' release have grown following a thaw in relations between Cairo and Qatar, where their employer is based.

Both the defence and the prosecution had requested a retrial.

"I know that we should be happy for accepting the appeal, but I was hoping for my brother to be released," Fahmy's brother Adel told reporters.

"I hope the reconciliation efforts between Egypt and Qatar continue for the sake of my brother and his colleagues ... who are paying the price of a political crisis."

The Al-Jazeera reporters, who authorities say lacked proper accreditation, were sentenced in June on charges of spreading false information that aided the Muslim Brotherhood after the army ousted president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The Brotherhood, which saw electoral success after the ouster of long-time strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has since been declared a "terrorist organisation" in Egypt.

Greste's parents told Australia's ABC ahead of the hearing that they had "confidence in the integrity of the Egyptian appeals system".

 'Settling political scores'

The reporters were arrested when Egypt and Qatar were at loggerheads after Morsi was removed by then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now president, following mass protests against his one-year rule.

"Their arrest was a settling of political scores between Egypt and Qatar," Fahmy's lawyer Negad al-Borai said.

Ties worsened when Qatar, a key backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, repeatedly denounced Morsi's overthrow, prompting Cairo to accuse Al-Jazeera of biased coverage.

At least 1,400 people have died in the crackdown on Islamist supporters, most of them in August 2013 when police broke up two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo.

The diplomatic row now appears to be ending following mediation by Gulf heavyweight Saudi Arabia, a key Sisi backer.

On 20 December, Cairo told a Qatari envoy it was ready for a "new era" in relations with Doha, as the emirate offered its "full support" to Sisi.

Two days later, Al-Jazeera announced the surprise closure of its Egyptian channel, which had consistently criticised Cairo since Morsi's ouster.

"It is quite likely the final result will be the release of the journalists. How and when that happens is another issue," H.A. Hellyer of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington told AFP ahead of Thursday's hearing.

Sisi himself has said he would have preferred the journalists to have been deported rather than tried. 

In November, he issued a decree allowing him to deport foreigners sentenced to prison or on trial.

The court also ordered a retrial for codefendants, including four Egyptians, in the case, who were jailed for seven years on charges of belonging to a terrorist organisation and for "damaging the image of Egypt".

Eleven other defendants, tried in absentia, including one Dutch and two British journalists, were given 10-year sentences.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which is based in New York, said in a special report last year that Egypt, for the first time, was one of the three most deadly countries in the world for journalists, after Syria and Iraq. Six journalists were killed in the line of duty in Egypt in 2013 — three on a single day, 14 August, as security forces dispersed a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in, killing hundreds of protesters.

Sherif Mansour, coordinator of the Middle East Program at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a report that the arrests were a politically motivated attempt on the part of Egypt’s military-installed government “to justify the idea that any attempt to interview members of the Muslim Brotherhood are acts of terrorism.”

“These arrests are part of an atmosphere of a government crackdown on any civic activity and using fear-mongering and propaganda to say that any independent or critical views help the Muslim Brotherhood and should be considered terrorist acts,” Mr. Mansour said. “It is happening to non-governmental organisations, it is happening to political activists and now it is happening to the media.”