Following Tuesday’s guilty verdict and seven year prison sentence that has caused global uproar and accusations of a farcical trail and unfair treatment, jailed Australian journalist Peter Greste has managed to convey a message to the supporting public from the Egyptian prison where he is being held.
Greste conveyed the message via his brothers Mike and Andrew, who paraphrased as best they could, given that writing material is now allowed inside the prison.
In the message, Greste again describes the enfeebled prosecution that helped convict him, and the political motivations behind the court’s ruling. During the trial, the prosecution presented everything from holiday photos of his parents, to a Gotye filmclip stored on a stranger’s phone as “evidence” of Greste’s “guilt”.
The full statement was posted on the Free Peter Greste Facebook page, and you can read it embedded below.
Greste was arrested on wild claims he, and other journalists associated with Al Jazeera produced deliberately false and misleading journalism aimed at destabilising the Egyptian government and supporting the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
Efforts to free the wrongly convicted Greste have begun, but will be lengthy and frustrating.
Photo: Mohamed El-Shahed via Getty Images.
