During the first session of their retrial on 12 February, the Cairo Criminal Court ordered the release of two Al-Jazeera journalists, the Canadian national Mohamed Fahmi and the Egyptian Baher Mohamed, who spent over a year in prison on charges of aiding terrorists and spreading misinformation. The next hearing will take place on 23 February. Fahmi was ordered to pay $33,000 as bail, while the rest of the defendants had no fee to pay. Except for Fahmi, all other defendants are banned from travelling. The release of Famhi and Mohamed took place two weeks after their Australian colleague, Peter Greste, was deported. On Thursday, Greste congratulated his soon-to-be-freed colleagues, saying on Twitter: “This is a huge step forward. Not time to declare it over, but at least you get to go home!” Fahmi and Greste were arrested in December 2013. In June 2014 they were both sentenced to seven years in prison, while Mohamed received a ten-year sentence. All maintained their innocence, claiming they were merely covering the riots following the removal of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Greste was released from jail by order of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, who cited a new law allowing the deportation of foreign prisoners. Al-Sisi issued a decree allowing the deportation of foreigners that have been detained pending investigations or convicted and imprisoned in Egypt. After the decree was passed, Greste was released and deported, and Fahmi, who is holds Egyptian as well as Canadian nationality, renounced his Egyptian citizenship in hopes of being deported — to no avail. During Thursday's brief hearing, Fahmi said the decision to renounce his Egyptian citizenship was “very difficult,” adding that an Egyptian security official told him that this was the only way out for him. “I don't understand how a defendant in the same case with the same evidence… is on the beach in Australia,” Fahmi said, raising an Egyptian flag, in court. One day prior to the first session of retrial, Canadian Ambassador to Egypt Ferry de Kerckhove met Egypt's prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat with a Canadian delegation, reportedly to lobby for speeding up legal procedures for Fahmi's release and deportation. Mohamed's lawyer, Mohamed Hussein, echoed Fahmi's stance: “If a stranger to this country has been released, it is only proper that one of the country's own should be too.” Following his release, Mohamed said he was “proud of every moment... spent in prison for the freedom of expression. I am really proud of it. If time goes back I will choose the same experience. I know the case is still there and I will continue to fight for our freedom of expression. I will not back off.” The Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest court of appeals, overturned their original convictions and decided to grant the journalists a retrial in January after challenging the evidence of the prosecution. The case was believed to stem from the strained Cairo-Doha relations. Egypt's ties with Qatar have been tested since Mohamed Morsi's ouster following mass protests on 30 June 2013. Qatar, which funds Al-Jazeera, was supportive of both Morsi and the Brotherhood. Mutual tensions saw signs of easing during the late months of 2014 when Qatar expelled prominent Brotherhood leaders in September. Last week Egypt welcomed an agreement to end the dispute among the Gulf Arab states over Qatar's support for the Islamist group. Though Al-Jazeera decided to suspend broadcasting of its Egyptian channel on 22 December, relations between the two countries are still unstable. “Bail is a small step in the right direction, and allows Fahmi and Mohamed to spend time with their families after 411 days apart,” an Al-Jazeera spokesman said on Thursday. “The focus though is still on the court reaching the correct verdict at the next hearing by dismissing this absurd case and releasing both journalists unconditionally,” the spokesman added. The trial of the Al-Jazeera journalists was condemned by Western governments and human rights groups and led to the United Nations questioning the independence of Egypt's judiciary, with the case generation international opprobrium arguably resulting in the release of Greste and the bail of his two coworkers. The Doha Centre's Sami Elhaj said calls for the release of the Al-Jazeera journalists had been made by the White House, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the European Union, the Australian government and over 150 rights groups, including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute. He added that over 200,000 people have signed petitions globally, and hundreds of thousands of people kept the hash tag #FreeAJStaff viral throughout the last year, urging the Egyptian authorities to release the three journalists. The Obama administration also expressed concern regarding the continued detentions. “We are following this case closely and continue to urge the Egyptian government to consider all available measures to release these journalists,” said a senior US state department official.
