Buzzfeed reported that the three Al Jazeera journalists who have been arrested and tried in what was dubbed largely by politicians, diplomats, and human rights groups as a Egytian "kangaroo" court have found them guilty of aiding terrorism. Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed were handed out a seven-year sentence in a maximum security prison in the country each on Monday over charges of spreading false news and supporting terrorism. Mohamed was given additional years for possession of a single bullet.
Cries were heard from the accused's family and friends when the sentence was read. The decision to find them guilty was alarming, as there was little to virtually no evidence that tied them to the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of the evidence used against them included photos with family on ski vacations. An award-winning BBC documentary Greste once filmed in Somalia was also entered as evidence as well.
The defense team of the three journalists challenged the prosecution's claims, and insisted that there were procedural flaws in the case, Buzzfeed reported. At one point, the prosecution has dubbed videos from Sky, BBC and other news outlets as coming from Al Jazeera. Moreover, the prosecution's witnesses also admitted in court that they cannot distinguish the difference between the local affiliates of Al Jazeera, which was widely seen as supporters of the Brotherhood, and Al Jazeera English, which employs the accused.
In a statement, Amnesty International slammed Egypt's handling of the case and said, "What the Egyptian authorities are doing is vindictive persecution of journalists for merely doing their jobs."
The three were among the 20 defendants named in the casem but only nine, including Greste, Fahmy, and Mohamed, were in custody. The six others were students and a charity worker. The rest were being tried in absentia.
Hope about the three's eventual release rose when US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Egypt and spoke to newly elected President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about the Al Jazeera case, Buzzfeed said.
