Biographies of Al-Jazeera journalists
Al-Jazeera English reporter Peter Greste left Egypt on Sunday after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approved his deportation. He was arrested with colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed in December 2013 on terrorism-related charges.
PETER GRESTE, 49
Australian Greste had barely arrived in Cairo to work as a correspondent when he was arrested along with Fahmy. He joined the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent in 1995, after freelancing in Britain. The following year, he covered Yugoslavia for Reuters before returning to the BBC. Greste spent more than a decade with the British broadcaster, reporting from across Latin America, the Middle East and Africa before joining Al-Jazeera in 2011 — the year he won a prestigious Peabody Award for a BBC report on Somalia. Greste’s hometown is Brisbane, Australia, but he now lives in Nairobi, Kenya. He also holds Latvian citizenship.
MOHAMED FAHMY, 40
Canadian-Egyptian Fahmy was working as a senior producer for Al-Jazeera English in Cairo at the time of his arrest. He previously worked for the New York Times, CNN and the International Committee of the Red Cross. He also covered the war in Iraq. Fahmy was born in Kuwait. He graduated from Cairo American College before moving to Canada with his parents. He earned degrees from Montreal’s LaSalle College and Vancouver’s City University. He co-authored a photo documentary of the January 25th Revolution, and won the Tom Renner Investigative Journalism Award in 2012 for producing a documentary for CNN called Death in the Desert.
BAHER MOHAMED, 31
Egyptian Baher Mohamed began working as a TV researcher and producer for the Japanese channel Asahi, and covered the 2011 Libyan uprising before joining Al-Jazeera in May 2013 as a producer. He has two children and lives in Cairo. His father was at one point the manager of the Muslim Brotherhood’s television channel, named January 25, which was launched after Egypt’s 2011 uprising.