Canadian journalist Mohammed Fahmy, seen at his first trial in Cairo on terror charges in May, 2014, is to begin a retrial Feb. 12.Hamada Elrasam/The Associated Press
The news that jailed Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy will be retried in Cairo comes during a period of instability and unpredictability in post-revolution Egypt. It also points to significant friction between many factions in the country, including the ministry of foreign affairs, the ministry of interior and the judiciary. As a result, a case that was set to be resolved through diplomatic channels is likely to be determined by an Egyptian judicial system known for its often harsh and sweeping verdicts.
The case has been a black eye for Cairo, ever since an Egyptian court last summer convicted Mr. Fahmy and two of his Al Jazeera English colleagues – Australian Peter Greste, who was deported from Egypt last week, and the still-imprisoned Egyptian Baher Mohamed. International human-rights groups condemned the prosecution as a farce, and Australian and Canadian diplomats raised the case repeatedly during meetings with their Egyptian counterparts.
A thorny issue for all countries involved, the Al Jazeera journalists' case has been the subject of backroom negotiation for months. Perhaps the most important catalyst came at a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Qatar last December.
For more than a year, the relationship between Cairo and Doha was one of outright antagonism. The authoritarian Egyptian government, led by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, had long complained that the Qatari monarchy had effectively chosen to side with ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood with which he is affiliated. Cairo was also enraged at the Arabic-language arm of the Qatari-controlled Al Jazeera television network, which it felt was heavily biased in favour of the Brotherhood.
The hostility was also poisoning relations between Qatar and the other five wealthy Arabian Gulf nations that make up the GCC. So, with myriad crises afflicting the region, the assembled Arab representatives came to a closed-door agreement that Egypt's imprisonment of three Al Jazeera journalists was diverting energy away from far their more pressing geopolitical – even existential – issues.
The Gulf neighbours were anxious about the raging violence of the extremist Islamic State group. Egypt, long the political centre of gravity of the Middle East and the most populous Arab country, was under attack from new homegrown militant groups and was in economic crisis after four years of revolution and counter-revolution.
All parties, including most importantly Saudi Arabia, which has helped keep the Egyptian economy afloat through tens of billions of dollars in aid – agreed that the optics of foreign journalists rotting in an Egyptian jail was not the sort of thing that inspired confidence among foreign investors.
Signs that the logjam had been broken were evident when, at the end of December, Qatar bowed to Egyptian feelings and shut down the Egyptian arm of Al Jazeera. A month later, Cairo set Mr. Greste free.
"This is probably part of a sort of gentlemen's agreement reached between the national leaders," said Mohamed Elmasry, an assistant professor at the University of North Alabama and a Middle East expert. "They met, reconciled and reached parameters for future relations."
However, in the past month, the geopolitical conditions under which the Egyptian-Qatari truce was forged have changed significantly. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, who had been one of Mr. el-Sissi's staunchest political and financial supporters, died in late January. His successor, King Salman, has shown no signs of similar support, opting instead to focus his efforts on mending Saudi Arabia's relationship with Qatar. Signs of worsening Saudi-Egyptian relations were evident early on, when Mr. el-Sissi failed to attend the late Saudi king's funeral.
While the new Saudi regime may complicate the case of the Al Jazeera journalists, there are also serious domestic impediments to Mr. Fahmy's freedom. Unlike Mr. Greste, Mr. Fahmy was a dual citizen (He was forced to give up his Egyptian citizenship on the understanding that it would facilitate his deportation to Canada, his family says.) Allowing him to give up his Egyptian citizenship in exchange for freedom may have been seen by some in Cairo as a dangerous precedent, given that there are other dual-citizens currently imprisoned in Egypt. A retrial, however, would allow Cairo to at least partly side-step those issues.
(While Mr. Fahmy's relatives called the prospect of a second trial a "nightmare," supporters of Mr. Mohamed were decidedly optimistic – largely because the prisoner has only Egyptian citizenship, and thus virtually no prospects of freedom via deportation.)
Domestically, Mr. el-Sissi faces very little pressure to release the men. The case has garnered relatively little attention among local media outlets, overshadowed by news of increasingly common terrorist attacks and continuing economic woe.
Nonetheless, the President previously sent strong signals Cairo would be willing to budge. Last November, he issued a decree – Law 140 – that allowed for the deportation of foreign suspects and prisoners at the request of their home countries. However the law is largely untested and it is unclear whether Mr. el-Sissi can still deport Mr. Fahmy midway through a retrial. If not, the Egyptian leader will either have to deport the Canadian in the next four days, before his retrial is due to start on Thursday, or let the new legal process run its full course.
The latter scenario presents its own set of risks. The post-revolution Egyptian judiciary has become infamous for sweeping, often inexplicable verdicts.
Nagy Shehata, the judge who presided over the journalists' first trial, once made international headlines for handing out a mass death sentence to almost 200 accused. Last week, the same judge sentenced prominent liberal activist Ahmed Douma to life in prison. A new trial – especially if it overturns the initial ruling – is likely to once against cast a spotlight on such verdicts, which have been widely condemned by human-rights groups. It is also likely to reinforce the perception that Egypt, a country in desperate need of stability, has precious little of it.
"You're still looking at things that are devastating for Egyptian citizens domestically, be it liberal activists sentenced to life in prison or whatever else," said Ramy Yaacoub, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, and a friend of Mr. Fahmy.
"There's a continuous alienation of a segment of society and a perception that the rule of law doesn't exist."