Egypt | Al-Jazeera reporter freed from jail wants colleagues released

Juris, right, and Lois Greste, parents of Australian journalist Peter Greste seen in a poster, and his brother Andrew, pose with a poster of him after speaking to the media

For more than a year, the parents of jailed Al-Jazeera English journalist Peter Greste kept up a relentless, resolute campaign to free their Australian son from an Egyptian prison. Yesterday, the misery that had been etched on their faces had been transformed into beaming grins as they bounded over to the microphones once more — this time, to proclaim their son a free man.
“There is still a sense of unreality about it all, much like the day 403 days back when we received a call one night that Peter’s in an Egyptian prison,” said Greste’s father Juris, who donned a festive red shirt and matching hat — a stark departure from his typically subdued attire. “To me, it is yet to quite sink in where we are, what’s happened.”
What happened was a surprise to many. Greste was released from prison and deported Sunday after a presidential “approval,” according to an Egyptian prison official and the nation’s official news agency. The official and an Interior Ministry statement said he was released under a new deportation law passed last year.
But the joy over Greste’s release was tempered by the news that two of his colleagues, Egyptian-Canadian Mohammed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed, remained jailed. The trio was arrested in 2013 over their coverage of the violent crackdown on Islamist protests following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi. Egyptian authorities accused them of providing a platform for Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, now declared a terrorist organization, but officials never provided any concrete evidence.
Greste, who was whisked out of Egypt on a flight to Cyprus, was in a state of disbelief about his freedom and deeply relieved — but still worried about his imprisoned friends, said his brother, Andrew Greste.
“His excitement is tempered and restrained and will be until those guys are free,” Andrew Greste said at the news conference in Brisbane. “He won’t give up until Baher and Mohammed are out of there.” Kristen Gelineau, Sydney, AP