My treatment by Egypt’s legal system has been a travesty of justice

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/21/egypt-al-jazeera-journalists-travesty-justice

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There is no such thing as a little bit of justice. Either justice is done, or it’s not. And in the case of my colleagues and I, arrested in Egypt in December 2013 and accused of collaborating with a banned organisation, justice has still not been served.

We went through a trial universally condemned as a travesty, convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison – with an extra three years for my colleague Mohamed Baher for possessing a single souvenir bullet casing. Even Egypt’s appeals court dismissed the original trial as “flawed” and “contradictory” and overturned the convictions. Then, on 1 February this year, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered me out of the country before the retrial could begin, and at the first hearing several weeks later, my colleagues Baher and Mohamed Fahmy and four others accused in our case were all released on bail.

Although we don’t know why president al-Sisi ordered my deportation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he was responding to the extraordinary and unprecedented global outcry that followed our convictions. Last year, millions of people became outraged not just because we three journalists had been imprisoned with no evidence, but over what they saw as an offence against the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and the role of a free press in any society that claims to be democratic.

In the euphoria and sense of relief that followed my release, one important fact seems to have been lost: that all three of us are still on trial on nonexistent evidence, and that I am in danger of being convicted once again for the same baseless charges, though this time thanks to a quirk of the Egyptian legal system.

At the last hearing on 9 May, the judge ordered me to appear before the court or be considered on trial in absentia. Under Egyptian rules, anyone who is not present for their trial is automatically convicted, regardless of the outcome for anyone else in the case. There is a real danger that I will have to carry a terrorism conviction that nobody but the prosecutor seems to think is valid.

To be clear, I am not on the run. I am out of Egypt and unable to attend the trial because the president ordered me out.

That’s why I am offering to give evidence via video link. My lawyer is working to formally ask the court to let me appear under oath from Australia.

This is unusual – perhaps unprecedented in the Egyptian courts – but our case is also unusual. Nobody has ever been deported while their trial is going on. But if the first principle of a judicial system is to get to the truth, then it makes sense to do everything possible to set the record straight. I have nothing to hide, and so if it helps the judge understand that we were doing nothing more sinister than working as a team of professional journalists, I am prepared to go through a cross-examination.

This will probably mean some political intervention to clear the way, though I am not asking for anything to influence the court’s conclusions. I am simply calling for the chance to defend myself and demonstrate that I am not a fugitive from justice.

This matters to the three of us, of course. We are prepared to do whatever it takes to clear our names. But our trial has also become emblematic of far wider principles.

To simply accept our convictions now, even though I am technically no longer in prison, would be an affront not just to those caught up in the case but to the millions who supported us in the first place. Everyone from the US president Barack Obama, to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, to the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott spoke out to condemn our imprisonment.

Hundreds of our own professional colleagues (many of them also our rivals) posted selfies with their mouths taped shut and holding “#FreeAJStaff” signs. And the over the course of our imprisonment, that hashtag got almost three billion impressions.

Our case made a lot of people angry, but it was our cause that really seemed to motivate and inspire them. And at a time when the freedom of the press is under attack as never before, it is vital that we do all we can to protect it.

If we are able to get a fair trial, and clear our names, it will vindicate not only ourselves but all those who stood behind us and supported us with such extraordinary passion and commitment.