1. 21/03/2016 2:53 pmJournalist Peter Greste is a victim of an old and bitter Middle East feud | HeraldSun
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Journalist Peter Greste is a victim of an old and bitter Middle East
feud
Journalist Peter Greste inside the defendants' cage during the trial.
BEWILDERING. Shocking. Devastating. The judge’s verdict in Monday’s court
hearing in Cairo that Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues, Mohammed Fahmy
and Baher Mohammed, had been sentenced to seven and 10 years in jail gutted not
just the defendants, their families and friends but millions around the world who had
followed the case.
Despite earlier disappointments, there was every expectation on Monday that Greste
and his colleagues would finally be set free. A fourth colleague, Abdullah Elshamy,
had been released last week after being on a hunger strike lasting almost five
months.
US Secretary of State John Kerry had visited President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo
on Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott had spoken to him by phone and Foreign
Affairs Minister Julie Bishop’s department had lobbied hard. All had expected good
news at Monday’s hearing. All were shocked and deeply disappointed.
It had been accepted that the case would not be resolved until after Egypt’s
presidential elections and the swearing-in of the new leader. With al-Sisi elected with
93 per cent of the vote and formally inducted, Kerry and Abbott expected their

2. 21/03/2016 2:53 pmJournalist Peter Greste is a victim of an old and bitter Middle East feud | HeraldSun
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friendly overtures would be rewarded with signs that Egypt was finally on the long
road to normalcy and full democracy.
Monday’s result is devastating not just for the journalists and their families but for
Egypt.
The one immediate source of hope is that the new President will stamp his authority
by issuing a pardon. More than the fate of three innocent men depends on that.
During his visit, Kerry announced the resumption of US military aid with the
unfreezing of a not insignificant $650 million, with more to follow. If al-Sisi does not
do something to address the transparent injustice of this case, and countless cases
that are less well known, the recent thawing of relations will be reversed.
So why does Peter Greste continue to occupy a tiny prison cell with his two
colleagues 23 hours a day? Does the Egyptian state have a case against him? Were
he or his colleagues really conspiring to side with the now banned Muslim
Brotherhood and damage the reputation of the Egyptian republic?
Over the course of six months, the prosecution failed to make even the beginnings of
a case. The “evidence” was not in the least bit damning, and largely irrelevant. So
why was — is — Greste in jail?
Wrong place, wrong time. The Al Jazeera journalists were simply caught up in the
machinations of a brutal police state in a time of chaos and sectarian tension.
The Egyptian military loathes Al Jazeera and resents the perceived interference of
Qatar, owner of the network, which is seen to be supportive of the Muslim
Brotherhood. During the one-year Brotherhood government of president Mohamed
Morsi, the wealthy emirate gave billions of dollars in aid to Egypt.
Like Greste, many of Al Jazeera’s journalists come from other news networks, like
the BBC and Reuters. Qatar has supported the Brotherhood but few of Al Jazeera’s
journalists are disposed to have any personal empathy with it.
AFTER the sacking of Morsi, a military coup by any other name, the kingdom of
Saudi Arabia stepped in to finance Egypt. The rulers of Saudi Arabia do not like the
rulers of Qatar and although each is inclined to back a conservative sect of Islam,
they see their respective camps as being fierce rivals. Greste and his colleagues
were simply caught in the middle.
The horrors of the civil war in Syria and the troubles in neighbouring Iraq have

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revealed to the world how bitter and brutal Sunni-Shi’ite relations can be at their
worst (although throughout history they have generally been peaceable and seldom
as hostile as they are in the 21st century). But the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry is not the only
sectarian fault line running through the Middle East and North Africa. Recent
decades have seen bitter disputes between the two very modern, very
fundamentalist interpretations of Islam represented by the Egyptian Muslim Brothers
and by the Saudi Salafis. That rivalry is played out across the region and around the
world.
Ironically, it was a strange amalgam of those two modern sects that gave rise to the
violent ideology we now associate with al-Qaeda and which currently threatens
citizens of Syria and Iraq.
Standing behind the duelling sects lie the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the emirates of
the Gulf and Iran — each backing different sides and each party to a proxy war
played out first in Iraq, then in Syria and now in Egypt.
There is a lot at stake in what happens to Greste, Fahmy and Mohammed. Beyond
their case, there is the future of Mohammed Badie, the leader of the Brotherhood,
and 181 others sentenced to death last Sunday, and the more than 16,000 political
prisoners currently in Egyptian jails. Beyond that again, there is the future of
democracy and good governance in Egypt.
And beyond even that, there is the question of what monstrous new reality will be
birthed out of brutal oppression. Al-Qaeda has its origins, in part, in the angry, dark
writings of Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb — writings set down when he was in an
Egyptian jail, up until his execution in 1966, having refused to join his younger
brother, Muhammad, in exile in Saudi Arabia. Muhammad and his Brotherhood
colleagues went on to teach Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Terrorism and
violent extremism are terrible — we only have to look at Syria and Iraq today to see
that.
But authoritarian crackdowns don’t stop terrorism, at least not for long. They give it
new life.
Prof Greg Barton is the director, international, of the Global Terrorism Research
Centre at Monash University