News / Egypt

Egypt frees Al-Jazeera reporter, orders his deportation

Sunday, 01 February 2015 3:36 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 01 February 2015 3:37 PM ]

The photo shows Al-Jazeera's Australian reporter Peter Greste during a court session in Cairo, Egypt, June 23, 2014. (AFP photo)

Egypt has released Al-Jazeera's Australian reporter from prison and ordered him to leave the country.

According to the Egyptian Interior Ministry on Sunday, Peter Greste was released following a presidential “approval” and is now on his way to the airport of the capital, Cairo, to leave the country for his homeland.

"There is a presidential decision to deport Peter Greste to Australia," said a senior official of the Egyptian Interior Ministry.

Under a new law ratified by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, foreigners who are arraigned in Egypt can be put on trial or serve their sentences in their homelands.

Greste was sentenced to seven years in prison for what the Egyptian judiciary called terrorism-related charges.

Greste and his two other Al-Jazeera colleagues, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, were accused of abetting Muslim Brotherhood which has been blacklisted by the Egyptian government as a terrorist party.

It is not yet clear if the two other detained journalists are set to be released as well.

Back in June 2014, an Egyptian court sentenced the three journalists working for Al-Jazeera news channel to seven years in prison each.

Mohamed was given a further three years in jail on a separate charge involving possession of “unlicensed ammunition.”

The rights groups have severely criticized the government of President Sisi for launching a heavy-handed crackdown on journalists and stifling freedom of speech in the Arab country.

Rights groups say the crackdown on the supporters of Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, has left over 1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while hundreds have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

Morsi was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Sisi who was then the army commander.

FNR/KA/SS

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