Egypt’s courts have begun trying twenty journalists, including four foreigners, among them, Al-Jazeera’s Egyptian-Canadian Bureau Chief, Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Australian correspondent, Peter Geste.
They face charges, including aiding a terrorist organisation, as the Muslim brotherhood was designated in December, and endangering national security.
Al-jazeera has said that only nine of those charged are members of staff and they were merely reporting the situation in Egypt.
It has said the allegations are “absurd, baseless and false” and consistently denied aiding the Muslim brotherhood, on which the authorities launched a fierce crackdown after the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi in July.
The interim government and its supporters have accused international news networks of bias in their reporting of human rights abuses against Morsi supporters and secular dissenters.
