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    Egypt court sets trial date for Al Jazeera journalists

    Cairo's criminal court set the verdict date for the retrial featuring three Al Jazeera journalists to July 30, in a trial that has brought Egypt plenty of international attention.

    Facing trial are Al Jazeera's Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Australian national Peter Greste, among many others.

    Reacting to the news of the verdict date, Greste said on Twitter, "keep shouting #FreeAJStaff", a hashtag that was used to show solidarity to the Qatari network's journalists.

    "Help us win justice for all in the case," Greste said.

    Egypt court sets trial date for Al Jazeera journalists

    Ahead of the session on Monday, Fahmy said they will be acquitted if the judge sees them as "journalists with no ill-intent." The three journalists were arrested in Cairo while working for the Qatari network in December 2013.

    They had initially been sentenced to prison in June 2014 but a court ordered their retrial in January. Greste was released from prison on February 1 after spending 400 days in prison.

    The Australian national was deported to Australia as per a presidential decree issued in November that allows deportation of foreign defendants and convicts "whenever the [state's] supreme interest necessitates so."

    Shortly after, Fahmy revoked his Egyptian citizenship in the hopes of benefiting from the same presidential decree. On February 12, Fahmy and Mohamed were both released on bail.

    This trial has been widely condemned internationally. Egypt's foreign ministry has previously denounced what it described as the "false allegations of restricting freedom of foreign media in Egypt."

    Source: allAfrica

    AllAfrica is a voice of, by and about Africa - aggregating, producing and distributing 2000 news and information items daily from over 130 African news organisations and our own reporters to an African and global public. We operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Lagos, Monrovia, Nairobi and Washington DC.

    Go to: http://allafrica.com/
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