Al-Jazeera journalists go on trial in Egypt

Al Tahrir TV broadcast the grainy footage of Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Peter Greste being questioned

Twenty journalists, including four foreigners, have gone on trial in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

They face charges including aiding a terrorist organisation - as the Muslim Brotherhood was designated in December - and endangering national security.


Eight defendants are in custody, among them al-Jazeera's Egyptian-Canadian bureau chief Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Australian correspondent Peter Greste.

The others, including two British journalists, will be tried in absentia.
Al-Jazeera has said only nine of those charged are members of staff and that they were merely reporting the situation in Egypt.

It has said the allegations are "absurd, baseless and false" and consistently denied aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, on which the authorities launched a fierce crackdown after the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi in July.

The interim government and its supporters have accused international news networks of bias in their reporting of human rights abuses against Morsi supporters and secular dissenters.
'Silencing criticism'
 
The 16 Egyptians going on trial inside the Tora prison complex in Cairo on Thursday have been charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation and "harming national unity and social peace".
The foreigners are accused of "collaborating with the Egyptians by providing them with money,

equipment, information", and "airing false news aimed at informing the outside world that the country was witnessing a civil war" - an apparent reference to the unrest that has left more than 1,000 people dead in the past seven months, mostly Morsi supporters.
Some of the charges carry sentences ranging from five to 15 years.

Peter Greste's parents tell the BBC their son is "entirely innocent"

 

Mr Greste, a former BBC correspondent, Mr Fahmy and a local Egyptian producer, Baher Mohamed were seized in a raid at a Cairo hotel on 29 December while reporting for al-Jazeera English. Prosecutors said they were working illegally because they did not have press passes.

Four days earlier, the interim government had declared the Brotherhood a "terrorist organisation", citing recent attacks on security installations and officials but providing no evidence implicating the Islamist movement.

Mr Greste's father said he had no particular expectations of what might happen at the start of the trial on Thursday.

"We clearly would desperately want the bail application to be accepted and granted," Juris Greste told the BBC from Brisbane. "But of course, as far as we are concerned, he's entirely and completely innocent and he should be either back home here or at his usual job in Nairobi."

Fellow journalists protested outside Egypt's embassy in London on Wednesday

 

He added that his son was coping "pretty well" with the strain of his arrest despite being held in solitary confinement for three weeks.

Mr Fahmy's brother told the BBC's Orla Guerin outside the prison complex that he had not had enough time to consult with his lawyer. Another relative said he was still being denied medical treatment for a broken shoulder and had not even been given any painkillers.

Aside from Mr Greste, the foreign defendants are understood to be Rena Netjes of Dutch newspaper Het Parool and BNR radio, who fled Egypt earlier this month, and British al-Jazeera reporters Dominic Kane and Sue Turton, who left the country last year.

Ms Turton told the BBC that she believed they were being "used as a test case" and that she was relying on the judges to dismiss the charges.

Sue Turton, who will be tried in her absence, says the charges have affected her work

"Al-Jazeera, in all our different channels, is watched widely across Egypt and I think one of the reasons we're being targeted is because they want to silence any kind of criticism. We were still trying to show every angle."

The US government has accused Egypt of targeting journalists and others with spurious claims, demonstrating an "egregious disregard for the protection of basic rights", and demanded their release.

"Journalists should not have to risk years in an Egyptian prison for doing their job," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The prosecution of these journalists for speaking with Muslim Brotherhood members, coming after the prosecution of protesters and academics, shows how fast the space for dissent in Egypt is evaporating."

Last month, prosecutors also referred 25 Egyptians to trial on charges of "insulting the judiciary," including Amr Hamzawy, an academic and former member of parliament who wrote a tweet questioning a court ruling.