The father of an Australian journalist jailed in Egypt said his family was stunned by the court’s decision to imprison his son, and Australia’s Prime Minister vowed his government would work quickly to free the reporter and get him out of Cairo.
Australian Peter Greste was one of three Al-Jazeera journalists sentenced by a Cairo court to at least seven years in prison on terrorism-related charges stemming from an interview with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Greste’s father Juris Greste on Tuesday told reporters in the family’s hometown of Brisbane that he was in a state of shock and was struggling to think straight.
‘We’re not usually a family of superlatives, but I have to say this morning my vocabulary fails to convey just how shattered we are,’ Juris Greste told a news conference. ‘You can never prepare yourself for something as painful as this.’