Lawyers make closing arguments in Al Jazeera trial

The court heard closing remarks in the prominent trial of three Al Jazeera journalists on Monday, and is expected to issue its final verdict on June 23.

Baher Mohamed, Peter Greste and Mohamed Fahmy have been in custody since December 2013, and are standing trial alongside 17 other defendants on terrorism-related charges. The court has repeatedly denied them bail.

On Monday, the court listened to the defense team of the students indicted in the case.

At the end of the session, Fahmy asked to step out of the dock and address the judge. He made a plea for his case and handed the judge a copy of former US President George Bush’s autobiography, reminding him that it wasn’t the media that destroyed Iraq, but the former US president himself.

Next week the court is expected to rule on the fate of the 20 defendants, 16 of whom are charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, while four others are accused of aiding such activities. Al Jazeera maintains that only nine of the defendants are journalists with the network. Eight are currently in detention, with the remainder being tried in absentia.

The defendants and the channel have denied all charges.

Local media has referred to the trial as the Marriott Cell case. Greste, an Australian, and Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, are accused of renting two hotel rooms in Cairo’s Marriott Hotel to edit videos portraying unrest in Egypt as a civil war. The journalists, who were arrested at the hotel on December 29 last year, had been working in the Marriott after the Al Jazeera office was raided by security forces in the summer.

A 22-minute video of their arrest and interrogation aired last February, sparking international controversy and widely cited as evidence of a violation of rights. The footage focused on laptops, external hard drives, notepads and copies of “Egyptian Freedom Story,” a book Fahmy authored after the January 25 uprising, that police confiscated from the hotel room as evidence of the journalists’ allegedly illegal activities.