The three Al-Jazeera staff – Canadian national Mohammed Fahmy who was the TV channel’s Cairo acting bureau chief, Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed – were detained in December 2013 while working for the Doha-based network. It might additionally impose an identical sentence because the final decide (seven years for Greste and Fahmy and 10 for Mohamed), or might additionally impose a superb on Al-Jazeera English for license violations.
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In the hopes of benefiting from the same decree which saw Greste released, Fahmy, who held a dual Egyptian-Canadian citizenship prior to the trial, revoked his Egyptian citizenship in February.
An Al Jazeera spokesperson said the network was “extremely angry” the verdict was adjourned.
A lawyer for one of the defendants, Baher Mohamed, said he had been informed that the session would not take place.
The journalists strenuously deny collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered to be a terrorist group, after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the military in 2013.
The ruling is now expected on August 2, state news agency MENA reported, though some relatives and lawyers said it was set for August 8.
Mohamed Fahmy’s legal saga was drawn out further on Thursday as an Egyptian court abruptly postponed a much-anticipated verdict in his widely denounced terror trial.
The proceedings have been delayed several times, including Thursday’s postponement that court officials attributed to the judge in the case being sick.
The entire world has its eyes turned on Egypt because this is a decisive trial for media freedom.
Human rights groups had criticized the trial. “I wanted to complete the marriage before the verdict because if we were married, Marwa could easily visit me in prison”.
Freed Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste smiles as he answers a question during an event in central London, Thursday, February 19, 2015.
Fahmy and his family move to Canada.
But Mr Greste was deported before the retrial began on the orders of Morsi’s successor Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
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Mohammad said the postponing of the verdict was “very strange”. Most of the journalists were accused of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
