BY Mansur Ibrahim
Three Al Jazeera journalists have been sentenced to at least seven years in jail in Egypt on charges of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news.
The judge delivered his verdict on Monday on Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed.
Greste and Fahmy was sentenced to seven years in jail, while Mohamed was sentenced to additional three years for possession of ammunition.
Al Jazeera has always rejected the charges against its journalists and maintains their innocence.
The journalists were arrested in December in Cairo as they covered the aftermath of the army’s removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency in July.
They faced the court more than a dozen times in their trial. The prosecution said Greste, Al Jazeera’s east Africa correspondent, and his Egypt bureau colleagues aided the Brotherhood and produced false news reports of the situation in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which supported Morsi, was listed as a “terrorist” organisation by the interim Egyptian government shortly before the accused were arrested.
The prosecution produced a number of items as evidence including a BBC podcast, a news report made while none of the accused were in Egypt, a pop video by the Australian singer, Gotye, and several recordings on non-Egyptian issues.
The prosecution had called for a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail for the journalists.
The defence maintained that the journalists were wrongly arrested and that the prosecution had failed to prove any of the charges against them.
Other Al Jazeera journalists were being tried in absentia. They were: Alaa Bayoumi, Anas Abdel-Wahab Khalawi Hasan, Khaleel Aly Khaleel Bahnasy, Mohamed Fawzi, Dominic Kane and Sue Turton.
A group of 16 Egyptians accused of being Brotherhood members, some of whom were also tried in absentia, faced up to 25 years.
Source: Aljazeera.com
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