BBC Online :
The retrial has begun in Egypt of two Al Jazeera journalists convicted last year of spreading false news to help a terrorist group. Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were imprisoned along with their Australian colleague, Peter Greste.
An appeals court ordered a retrial last month, saying the original court’s verdict was not supported by evidence.
Greste was freed last week under a law allowing the deportation of foreign nationals to their home countries.
Fahmy has since given up his Egyptian citizenship to qualify for deportation to Canada, but Mohamed has no foreign passport.
The journalists strenuously deny collaborating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the military in 2013. They say they were jailed simply for reporting the news.
The first trial of the journalists was widely condemned internationally, and the Court of Cassation ruled on 1 January the the Cairo Criminal Court had been “hasty in pronouncing its verdict”.
On Monday, the deputy head of the Court of Cassation, Judge Anwar Gabry, said prosecutors had failed to present conclusive evidence that the defendants helped the Brotherhood or promoted the group.
He also said the trial had failed to investigate claims that the defendants had given testimony under duress, and as a result “the Court of Cassation is unable to show how right or wrong the verdict is”.
The retrial has begun in Egypt of two Al Jazeera journalists convicted last year of spreading false news to help a terrorist group. Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were imprisoned along with their Australian colleague, Peter Greste.
An appeals court ordered a retrial last month, saying the original court’s verdict was not supported by evidence.
Greste was freed last week under a law allowing the deportation of foreign nationals to their home countries.
Fahmy has since given up his Egyptian citizenship to qualify for deportation to Canada, but Mohamed has no foreign passport.
The journalists strenuously deny collaborating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the military in 2013. They say they were jailed simply for reporting the news.
The first trial of the journalists was widely condemned internationally, and the Court of Cassation ruled on 1 January the the Cairo Criminal Court had been “hasty in pronouncing its verdict”.
On Monday, the deputy head of the Court of Cassation, Judge Anwar Gabry, said prosecutors had failed to present conclusive evidence that the defendants helped the Brotherhood or promoted the group.
He also said the trial had failed to investigate claims that the defendants had given testimony under duress, and as a result “the Court of Cassation is unable to show how right or wrong the verdict is”.
