New trial for three journalists arrested in Egypt

CAIRO – An Egyptian appeals court ordered a retrial Thursday in the case of three imprisoned Al-Jazeera English journalists.

The decision by Egypt’s Court of Cassation came after a hearing that lasted only a few minutes.

Canadian-Egyptian Mohammed Fahmy, Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohammed, who have been held since their arrest in December 2013, were not granted bail.

The three journalists did not attend the brief hearing Thursday morning in Cairo.

Defense lawyers said they believed a retrial for the three men would be held within a month.

Lois Greste, Peter Greste’s mother, said after the hearing that the verdict was “not as good as we hoped.”

Adel Fahmy, Mohammed Fahmy’s brother, said he had hoped that his brother would have been freed Thursday. He said each lawyer received three minutes to argue the case.

“I hoped for more today,” he said.

Fahmy and Greste were sentenced to seven years in prison at their initial trial, while Mohammed got 10 years – three more because he was found with a spent bullet casing. Rights groups dismissed the trial as a sham and foreign countries, including the U.S., expressed their concern over the journalists’ detention.

Authorities accused Qatar-based Al-Jazeera of acting as a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood. The news agency denied the accusations and said the journalists were doing their jobs.

At trial, prosecutors offered no evidence backing accusations that the three falsified video to foment unrest. Instead, they showed edited news reports by the journalists, including Islamist protests and interviews with politicians. Other video submitted as evidence had nothing to do with the case, including a report on a veterinary hospital and Greste’s past reports out of Africa.

The Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appeal tribunal, reviews only the lower court’s proceedings, not the case itself.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi also has the power to pardon or deport the foreigners under a new law. That would allow Greste to go home and would allow Fahmy to go to Canada if he dropped his Egyptian citizenship. Mohammed holds only Egyptian citizenship.

After recent thaw in relations between Qatar and Egypt, Al-Jazeera closed its Egyptian affiliate, which dedicated much of its coverage to Islamist protests since Morsi’s overthrow. El-Sissi said last month that a presidential pardon was being “examined” and would be granted only if it was “appropriate for Egyptian national security.”