H.A. Hellyer is a non-resident fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. He is the author of Muslims of Europe: the 'Other' Europeans.
Since Egypt arrested and jailed three Al Jazeera English journalists in 2013, more than 400 days ago, their case has been shrouded in all kinds of ironies and hypocrisies. The release of one of those journalists inspires much the same. Assuaged by the freedom of Australian journalist Peter Greste and now Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, who was released, albeit with a heavy bail Thursday, far too many in the West will forget that there are many other abuses and unfairly imprisoned figures in Egypt who ought to be focused on.
Let's back up: Mr. Greste, Mr. Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were arrested and imprisoned for no plausible reason. An international campaign began, calling for their release – not a campaign for all journalists, though – just these three. There are many other Egyptian journalists behind bars – numbers differ, but at least a dozen are currently in detention. Unfortunately for them, they are only Egyptian nationals, and don't work for a channel that broadcasts in English. (Incidentally, there are also a number of non-journalists in similar circumstances, but we seldom hear much about them.)
And even among the three journalists in the Al Jazeera case, equal attention has not been paid. Mr. Greste, a Latvian-Australian, became the most prominent figure for the international community. Mr. Fahmy, who holds Canadian citizenship in addition to the Egyptian citizenship he was pressured to renounce, received a fair amount of international attention as well.
Mr. Mohamed, though, holds only Egyptian nationality. The fear was always that if Mr. Fahmy were released, along with Mr Greste, the campaign would lose steam: a fear that would have been absent had Mr. Mohamed had been released first while the other two remained in prison. Mr. Mohamed's brother, Assem, may not have been quite politically correct when he said earlier this month, "Baher will not be released … as always, what happens in Egypt is that it is the Egyptians who pay."
Let's turn to the state. What do these events mean? These three men were charged, and convicted, of being essentially "threats to national security." It took minutes for a judge to order the first retrial – and a few weeks for the presidency to order a deportation. What do such quick processes mean about the procedures that led to their original conviction? Either the quick retrial and presidential deportation orders were reckless with such maniacal men – or the original trial was so remarkably full of holes that the case should never have even made it to trial in the first place, let alone producing a guilty verdict.
What's going to happen now? Perhaps Mr. Mohamed, who was released Thursday without bail, as were the rest of the defendants caught up in this trial, will be exonerated, too, but only after the retrial scheduled to resume Feb. 23 is completed. Even without that, however, it is likely that many in the West will consider the integrity of the Egyptian system to have been proven. As such, the international community needn't be too concerned about claims of other human-rights abuses – they will also be sorted out, eventually, people will say.
But there is a rather bad omen, one that emerged on the same day of Mr. Greste's release. In late January, activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh was killed in broad daylight in downtown Cairo as the Egyptian security forces broke up a protest. The Egyptian authorities came extremely close to openly admitting that a police officer was responsible for her death. (Human Rights Watch as well as other rights groups claimed as much directly.) But then officials announced that they were investigating one of Ms. al-Sabbagh's own colleagues. The day Mr. Greste was deported, they continued that investigation by interrogating the vice-president of her party. One imagines that if any of Ms. al-Sabbagh's colleagues had ever considered killing her, they probably wouldn't have planned on doing it in broad daylight in central Cairo.
What comes next? Perhaps security reform, so that the forces that arrested the Al Jazeera journalists might refrain from doing similar things in future? Perhaps judicial reform, if only to avoid a repeat of the news coverage cataloguing how the evidence their trial included possession of items as riveting as news clips about an animal hospital for donkeys and horses?
Unfortunately, neither of those reforms, which Egypt so needs, is very likely. No previous Egyptian authority – not former presidents Hosni Mubarak or Mohamed Morsi – has been interested in that kind of restructuring. But just because no one is interested doesn't mean it's not actually necessary – indeed, it just becomes more necessary. At some point, we can only hope that someone in power will realize that.