Defiant Greste stuck in Australia amid arrest fears
JOURNALIST Peter Greste is a virtual prisoner in Australia, under threat of being extradited to Egypt to serve a threeyear jail sentence if he travels outside his home country.
The foreign correspondent said he was “devastated and sickened” by the three-year sentence he and two colleagues had been given by an Egyptian court.
Speaking to The CourierMail yesterday, Greste vowed to fight the verdict, which was handed down to him and his colleagues, Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed.
“My lawyers are saying that if I travel anywhere that I run the risk of being arrested,” he said.
“That means that if I cross the border pretty much any- where, there’s a chance that I will be arrested … Australia is a pretty good place to be forced to stay but it still represents a form of confinement. I can’t accept that.”
Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed were arrested in December 2013, accused of spreading false information and aiding the black-listed Muslim Brotherhood.
Greste spent 400 days in an Egyptian prison, eventually being released in February, while his colleagues were released on bail soon after following an appeals court last year overturning their initial jail sentences.
The most recent re-trial now sees Fahmy and Mohamed forced to return to jail.
“I know what these guys are up against, I know what they’re facing and it’s going to be incredibly tough for them,” Greste said.