Egyptian court jails 3 Al Jazeera journalists 3yrs each

An Egyptian court on Saturday jailed a trio of Al Jazeera journalists for three years each on charges of broadcasting false news and working without permits in the retrial of a case that has highlighted the country's crackdown on the media.
The judgement, handed down after the initial seven-year sentences against the three were overturned on appeal, drew rapid condemnation from rights groups, reports dpa.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said, "Abuse of the law ... has made Egypt one of the riskiest countries in the world to be a journalist."
Judge Hassan Farid said Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed broadcast false news and operated without permits or licenses.
Farid asserted that the three men were not in fact journalists because they were not registered with the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate or the Information Ministry, which issues permits to foreign journalists.
He did not mention prosecution claims that the defendants had collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned as a terrorist organization by Egyptian authorities.
Three Egyptian students on trial alongside the journalists were also jailed for three years. 
Fahmy's brother Adel said his family was "devastated" by the verdict.
"We can't believe that this has happened again, even after the court's own technical committee said that there was no fabrication [in the journalists' work]," he said.
Prominent international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who has been advising Fahmy, said the verdict "sends a dangerous message that there are judges in Egypt who will allow their courts to become instruments of political repression and propaganda."
The judgement came after 13 sessions in a retrial that started in February. Australian citizen Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Fahmy and Egyptian Mohammed had been arrested in December 2013 and were sentenced in their first trial last year.
Greste was sentenced Saturday in absentia after President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi ordered him to be deported in January. Fahmy and Mohammed were taken into custody as soon as the verdict was handed down. They had earlier been detained for 13 months until they were released on bail in February.
A second appeal is possible, and if it is accepted, a final retrial will be heard directly by the country's highest appeals court, which slammed the initial verdict as lacking in evidence against the defendants.
But Adel Fahmy said his family would not seek to rely on an appeal, pressing instead for Fahmy to be deported like Greste.
During an earlier hearing, Fahmy told the court that he had been pressed by a senior security official to give up his Egyptian citizenship "because the state wants to get rid of this case, which has become a nightmare."
In a move widely seen as aimed at defusing the controversy over the trial, al-Sissi last year issued a decree enabling him to order the deportation of foreign defendants and convicts in the national interest.
Al Jazeera reacted angrily to the verdict, saying the case was "heavily politicized and has not been conducted in a free and fair manner."
"There is no evidence proving that our colleagues in any way fabricated news or aided and abetted terrorist organizations," the network's acting director general, Mostefa Souag, said.
The network said its lawyers would lodge an appeal on behalf of its staff.
Canadian consular minister Lynne Yelich said her country was "disappointed" by Fahmy's conviction and called on Egypt to "allow his immediate return to Canada."
Amnesty International and the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders both slammed the trial as "grossly unfair."
The trial is seen as stemming from a feud between Egypt and the Gulf emirate of Qatar, the owner of Al Jazeera and a strong backer of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Cairo has repeatedly accused Al Jazeera of a bias towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fahmy has charged the channel with putting its staff at risk by operating without the appropriate licences and has filed a case against it in the Canadian courts seeking compensation.
Egyptian authorities have clamped down on the media since al-Sissi, as army chief, ousted president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013 after mass protests.
Islamist television stations have been shut down, and independent newspapers now frequently publish near-identical headlines when covering major issues.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said in June that 18 Egyptian journalists were in jail in relation to their work, the highest number since the group started keeping records in 1990.
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