Doha - Al-Jazeera called for the swift release of three
of its journalists detained in Egypt for more than a year, after the top appeal
court on Thursday ordered a retrial.
The Qatar-based television news channel said that
prolongation of the custody of its three staffers while legal proceedings
dragged on could only do further damage to Egypt's international standing.
Al-Jazeera's acting director general, Mostafa Souag,
welcomed the retrial but said the journalists had been "unjustly
imprisoned".
"Their arrest was political, the sentencing was
political and their being kept in prison is, for us, political," he said
on the news channel.
"As a result, we hope a political decision will be
taken to release them all, without waiting for a retrial," he said.
Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy
and Egyptian Baher Mohamed of the broadcaster's English service have been
detained since December 2013 on charges of aiding the party of ousted Egyptian
president Mohamed Morsi.
The case, which triggered global outrage, has been widely
seen as political and reflecting the anger of the post-Morsi Egyptian regime
with Al-Jazeera's Qatari sponsors who backed the Islamist.
Hopes for the journalists' release have grown following a
thaw in relations between Cairo and Doha.
Egypt's top court ordered a retrial of the three
reporters but kept them in custody pending a new hearing.
"The Egyptian authorities have a simple choice -
free these men quickly or continue to string this out, all the while continuing
this injustice and harming the image of their own country in the eyes of the
world," the channel said in a statement Thursday.
"They should choose the former."
