Cairo: In the game of high-stakes absurdity that Egypt is playing in the trial of three al-Jazeera journalists, including Australian Peter Greste, Tuesday’s proceedings must surely represent 'peak farce'.
Distorted audio recordings even Judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata could not decipher, footage and photographs taken well before the Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief, Mohamed Fahmy, was working at al-Jazeera English and crucial evidence viewed without the presence of defence lawyers were just some of the low points of the sixth day of the trial.
Footage of a story from Greste, which featured an interview with a sheep farmer, prompted a sarcastic response from one of the lawyers, who asked the judge: “Can we put the sheep to one side and bring forward what is relevant to the case? This is a waste of time.”
But as each day unfolds, there is little indication of exactly what evidence the prosecution has that is relevant to the case.
On April 10 the court was treated to holiday snaps of Greste’s parents Lois and Juris travelling through Europe, footage of a press conference from Kenya and Greste’s award-winning BBC documentary on Somalia.
On Tuesday, the three defendants, Greste, Fahmy and their Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed watched with quiet dismay that at times built to open anger as the prosecution played clip after clip that were utterly unremarkable in their journalistic integrity.
From the 21 young women, some just 15 years old, who were sentenced by an Egyptian court to 11 years in prison for protesting, to the demonstrations that grew across the country following the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Mursi, they were all stories most correspondents had covered without a second thought.
They were, after all, the news of the day.
At one point the court watched a brief clip of the horrific scenes in the makeshift morgue in al-Iman Mosque in Nasr City the day after Egyptian security forces “cleared” the Brotherhood protest sites at Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque and al-Nahda Square.
Many journalists – including Fairfax Media – were in al-Iman Mosque on August 15 last year, watching as families stricken with grief tried to find their loved ones amongst a sea of corpses.
But in the tumultuous history of Egypt’s revolution – from the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 to the brutal rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to the disastrous year of Mursi’s term and its violent, angry aftermath, the story of al-Iman Mosque was, in the end, just another story.
As Fahmy shouted from the defendant’s cage at one point: “Every journalist has this on their computer … why is this even evidence?”
The three Jazeera journalists are charged with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood – which the government has now declared a terrorist organisation – to falsify news that damaged Egypt’s international reputation.
They have been in prison since they were arrested on December 29 and although they deny the charges and the court has yet to see any evidence to prove the prosecution’s claims, bail has repeatedly been denied.
Their trial and Egypt’s ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation of the media has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups.
Mohamed Lotfy, who was observing the trial for Amnesty International, expressed deep concerns about the integrity of the proceedings after the media were forced to leave halfway through the day. It appears photographers taking pictures during an adjournment prompted the expulsion, although with some cajoling, we were allowed back into the court an hour later.
“It is an indication of how absurd the situation is,” Lotfy said. “The trial should not even be happening in the first place – it is putting the Egyptian judiciary in a very awkward situation of trying journalists for doing their jobs.”
Human rights groups say at least 16,000 people have been arrested and detained since July 3, when the military forced Mursi from power, while more than 1000 have been killed.
The Qatari-owned al-Jazeera news network has been caught up in the crackdown, targeted because it is perceived in Egypt as being overly sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Its local affiliate, al-Jazeera Mubasher, has been banned, although al-Jazeera English – where Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed work – is viewed differently and continues to broadcast.
Egyptian security forces have since broadened their campaign to include academics, students, atheists, unionists and journalists – anyone who dares to challenge the interim, military-backed government’s narrative.
The trial was adjourned until May 3 and the journalists were again denied bail.
