Hostile state

For foreign journalists in Egypt, the sentences that turned their colleagues into the story has brought a looming sense of sadness, anger and dismay. "At that point, you didn't really want to be a journalist, you didn't want to be reporting anything, you just felt extreme sadness, you felt destroyed," said Sherine Tadros, a correspondent for Sky News, of the moment she heard the verdict in court. "We were reporting the story, but they were our friends."

"It sent a message that journalists should toe the line of the government or else this politicized judicial system will be used against you," said Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists about the verdicts.

Evidence presented by the prosecution in court included a news conference from Kenya, a BBC documentary from Somalia which won Greste a Peabody Award, footage of sheep and trotting horses aired by Sky News Arabia, images of Peter Greste's parents on holiday in Germany and Latvia, and the pop song "Somebody I use to know," by Belgian-Australian artist Gotye. The prosecution asserted they had further evidence but that it could not be shown because they did not have the proper equipment to play it in court.

Flimsy evidence

"It's an objective fact to say that there is no evidence at all that suggests that these guys have endangered national security or belong to the Brotherhood, there is nothing of that that we saw in court," Patrick Kingsley, the Guardian's Egypt correspondent who attended all but one session of the trial, told DW. "The feeling that they are being convicted on the same kind of reporting that the rest of us have been doing is quite a chilling thought."

Fahmy, an award-winning journalist who previously worked for CNN and the New York Times, had spent less than two months as Al Jazeera English's Cairo bureau chief at the time of their arrests in December from Cairo's Marriott Hotel. Greste, an award-winning journalist who had previously worked for the BBC, had flown in from Kenya to fill in for a colleague on leave during the Christmas holidays and had spent only 10 days reporting in Egypt.

Three other foreign journalists were found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in absentia. Among them was Dutch journalists Rena Netjes, who has never worked for Al Jazeera, but was implicated after she had tea with Fahmy at the hotel just days before his arrest. Netjes was able to escape with the assistance of the Dutch embassy, partly because her name was unrecognizably misspelled and her passport number incorrect on court documents.

Others defendants in the case claimed they have no connection to Al Jazeera, including students and the head of an Islamic charity. The only two defendants acquitted were a student, Ahmed Abdel-Hamid, and in an ironic twist, Anas el-Beltagy, the son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed el-Beltagy who was sentenced to death last week by Judge Nagy.

Random and without restraint

The verdict, coming on the heels of mass death sentences of hundreds of alleged supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, stoked fears among journalists that courts are acting without restraint.

"Truly scary bit from [Al Jazeera trial] verdict? I really do believe nobody is telling Egypt judges to act like this," tweeted Ashraf Khalil, a Cairo-based Egyptian-American journalist and contributor to Time Magazine.

Fears of growing media repression were compounded when a Coptic Christian journalist who was arrested while reporting on sectarian violence in April was sentenced to five years prison on the same day the Al Jazeera verdict was handed down, and the conviction on Wednesday of another journalist who had worked for an Islamist media.

"Journalist Abdel Rahman Shaheen arrested on street in Suez on 9 April sentenced to 3 years in prison. Who's next?" tweeted Shahira Amin, a freelance Egyptian journalist, about the arrest. "Everyone," commented Erin Cunningham, a Cairo-based correspondent for the Washington Post, in response to Amin's question.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Egypt is currently holding at least 14 journalists in prison, placing the country among the top ten jailers of journalists in the world. Beyond fears of arrest, many journalists say their ability to work freely in Egypt has been constrained by a hostile climate on the streets provoked by Egyptian media.

Hostile climate

"I am reluctant to go to public spaces and identify myself as a foreign journalist, unless it's absolutely necessary," said Borzou Daragahi, Middle East and North Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. "This is caused by the atmosphere of hysteria against foreigners and journalists whipped up by state media and private channels owned by the military regime's courtiers."

Following the sentencing of the Al Jazeera journalists on Monday, Egyptian media justified the verdict by claiming the defendants were not actual journalists because they worked for Al Jazeera. One Egyptian presenter, Ibrahim Eissa, defended the sentences on air despite having been prosecuted for his work as a journalist under former autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

"The most riveting aspect of the climate in Egypt at the moment is the Egyptian media itself," said Kingsley. "There is so much incitement against foreign journalists on television and in the rest of the media that it doesn't take much, just one person getting suspicious and in the process turning the whole street against you and maybe nearby police."

Kingsley added that the threat was not new and that swathes of foreign journalists had been temporarily detained in the months since the July coup. Kingsley said he had also been followed and watched at his home in an obvious manner by who he believes were state agents.

Standing tall

But while journalists say the hostile atmosphere has caused more caution, they also say state intimidation has not pressured them to toe the government's line.

"We are all cautious about our movements and actions on the street and in public spaces, but we are not pulling our punches in reporting," said Daragahi. "The atmosphere is fairly typical of Arab police states."

And for others, the attempt to silence the media has become motivation.

"On the one hand I am fearful, on the other hand, there is a lot of resolve that comes when you feel there is such a need to tell the real story," said Tadros who worked in Egypt under Mubarak, during the 2011 revolution, and during Morsi's rule and said press freedom was worse now than ever before.

"The fact is, no one else is criticizing or holding the government accountable, the local media definitely is not, so we have to also continue to do our jobs or else nobody will."