No presidential pardon in Egypt for Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy

FILE - In this Thursday, May 5, 2014 file photo, Mohammed Fahmy, Canadian-Egyptian acting bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, appears in a defendant's cage at a courtroom in Cairo, Egypt. Photo: AP Photo/Hamada Elrasam, File

Despite hopes that a presidential pardon would set them free, three jailed Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt were not among a list of people cleared for release Sunday.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a number of pardons to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan but ignored calls to release Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, Australian correspondent Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed. All three men were sentenced last month to seven to 10 years for aiding a “terrorist” group, the banned Muslim Brotherhood whose democratically elected leader Sisi deposed in a coup in 2013.

Fahmy was Cairo bureau chief for Al Jazeera’s English-language service when he was arrested Dec. 29 along with his two colleagues, with Egypt’s government and media labelling them the “Marriott Terror Cell” in reference to their hotel room. Their trial and conviction were widely decried as a miscarriage of justice, and Al Jazeera maintains their only crime was reporting on all sides of the Egyptian revolution.

In a just-released explanation of his verdict, the judge who convicted the three men last month said “the devil encouraged them to use journalism and direct it towards actions against this nation,” according to the Guardian. He also claimed the three journalists doctored footage in their news reports to embarrass Egypt, despite the evidence presented at trial showing no such thing.

“We all respected the Egyptian judicial system and played along in what has become a theatrical trial broadcast all over the world,” Fahmy wrote in a letter from prison earlier in July. “As the authorities paraded me and my colleagues out of the cage, it became evident to the journalism community that this trial was another sign of the crackdown on any dissent in Egypt and a subliminal message to local journalists who do not conform to the government’s line.”

FILE – In this Monday, March 31, 2014 file photo, Al-Jazeera English producer Baher Mohamed, left, Canadian-Egyptian acting Cairo bureau chief Mohammed Fahmy, center, and correspondent Peter Greste, right, appear in court along with several other defendants during their trial on terror charges, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Heba Elkholy, El Shorouk, File) EGYPT OUT

Since coming to power in July of 2013, the military-led government of Egypt has targeted Al Jazeera as part of a larger fight against the government of Qatar, which owns the news network and is seen as a political rival in the Gulf region. Fahmy, Greste and Mohamed’s convictions were highly damaging to the new regime, which even Sisi admitted in a recent interview, and families of the three men had hoped the president would grant a pardon as a way of diffusing a diplomatically embarrassing situation.

“Unfortunately it’s not on the table,” Fahmy’s brother, Adel, told the Globe and Mail following the release of the presidential pardons on Sunday. “We knew it was extremely unlikely especially in cases of this magnitude and this nature.”