Egypt's Foreign Ministry on Thursday rejected U.S. criticism of its top prosecutor's decision to refer 20 Al-Jazeera journalists to trial on terrorism-related charges, insisting the country's judiciary is independent.
The group is to be put on trial on charges of aiding or joining a terrorist group and endangering national security. The charges expand a heavy-handed crackdown that authorities have waged against the Muslim Brotherhood since the military's ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.
Authorities have long depicted the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network as biased toward Morsi and his Brotherhood and have sought to bar it from operating. But the charges now effectively depict the station's reporting as support for terrorism after the government declared the Brotherhood a terror organization in December. The network denies any bias.
The 20 defendants are known to include three men working for Al-Jazeera English: Acting bureau chief Mohammed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian, award-winning correspondent Peter Greste of Australia and producer Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian. The three were arrested on Dec. 29 in a raid on the hotel suites in which they were working.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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