Al-Jazeera
called for the swift release of three of its journalists detained in Egypt for
more than a year, after the top appeal court on Thursday ordered a retrial.
The
Qatar-based television news channel said that prolongation of the custody of
its three staffers while legal proceedings dragged on could only do further
damage to Egypt’s international standing.
Al-Jazeera’s
acting director general, Mostafa Souag, welcomed the retrial but said the
journalists had been “unjustly imprisoned”.
“Their
arrest was political, the sentencing was political and their being kept in
prison is, for us, political,” he said on the news channel.
“As a
result, we hope a political decision will be taken to release them all, without
waiting for a retrial,” he said.
Australian
Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed of the
broadcaster’s English service have been detained since December 2013 on charges
of aiding the party of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
The case,
which triggered global outrage, has been widely seen as political and
reflecting the anger of the post-Morsi Egyptian regime with Al-Jazeera’s Qatari
sponsors who backed the Islamist.
Hopes for
the journalists’ release have grown following a thaw in relations between Cairo
and Doha.
Egypt’s
top court ordered a retrial of the three reporters but kept them in custody
pending a new hearing.
“The
Egyptian authorities have a simple choice — free these men quickly or continue
to string this out, all the while continuing this injustice and harming the
image of their own country in the eyes of the world,” the channel said in a
statement Thursday.
“They
should choose the former.”
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