Marwa Omara, wife of former Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English Mohamed Fahmy, says Ottawa could do more to secure his deportation.Amir Makar/The Globe and Mail
As Marwa Omara sits in her dimly lit Cairo apartment, there is an unusual silence. The rental is where she and her new husband, Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, had lived together, but now she is alone.
"At first, after the verdict, I didn't know what to do and was thinking of moving back in with my parents, for my safety and because I didn't want to be by myself," said Ms. Omara, in an interview with The Globe and Mail at her home on Tuesday evening. "But I've decided to stay because I feel more secure here. I feel like Mohamed is still here."
On Saturday, Mr. Fahmy, the former Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English, Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed and Australian journalist Peter Greste were sentenced to three years in prison on charges ranging from broadcasting out of a hotel without proper licences to spreading false news. The verdict was the latest development of an 18-month saga that has thrown Egypt's crackdown on media into the international spotlight, placed Canada's diplomatic efforts under scrutiny and turned Ms. Omara's life upside down.
"I feel like I'm going through everything again; it's the same dramatic experience all over," Ms. Omara said. "But this time I'm tired, I'm exhausted and drained, and also disappointed."
Since Saturday's verdict, she has spent her days speaking to media and co-ordinating with her lawyers: international human-rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who is pressing internationally for Mr. Fahmy's release; as well as Egyptian lawyer Mohamed Hamouda. She is also in touch daily with the Canadian ambassador in Cairo.
"Prison has changed Mohamed, it changed his brothers and his parents, and it also changed me," Ms. Omara said. "It's difficult to feel anything, to feel love, to feel joy, even sadness, to feel anything. But I'm still persistent to get him out, that hasn't changed."
Ms. Omara's then-fiancé spent more than 400 days in prison after he and his colleagues were sentenced to seven to 10 years on terror-related charges after a high-profile trial that was widely considered a sham. Last January, an appeals court threw out the original sentence and ordered a retrial.
After successful diplomatic efforts by Australia, Mr. Greste was deported at the end of January. Mr. Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship after receiving assurances from both Canadian and Egyptian officials he would be deported if he did so. Ms. Omara quit her job as a communications professional and packed their bags.
But with no explanation, Mr. Fahmy was not released. Instead, he and Mr. Mohamed were freed on bail and a retrial soon began. No longer employed, Ms. Omara said she and Mr. Fahmy spent all their time together.
"He was physically out, but we always had this fear that he might go back to prison," she said. During the six months he was out on bail, the two officially married and made plans for a new life in Canada. Mr. Fahmy would take a break from journalism and lecture at the University of British Columbia.
"He used to tell me that I would like Canada a lot, especially Vancouver," she said. "We had so many plans, but everything has changed."
When the booming voice of Judge Hassan Farid announced that Mr. Fahmy and his co-defendants were not journalists and that they were being sent back to prison, Ms. Omara dropped her head and sobbed. "I collapsed, more this time than the first time, because I never expected this sentence, never at all," she said. "It's very hard to feel that you will go through the same experience all over again, the same humiliation, the same suffering, the same pain."
Back at her home, a stack of her husband's books and four Canadian flags sit on her dining room table. Clothing and bags are strewn across her living room, tossed on the floor in the morning as she rushed to pack food, clothes and medicine for his hepatitis C to deliver to her husband in prison.
Despite being initially told no visits would be allowed for 30 days, on Tuesday Ms. Omara and Mr. Fahmy's brother Adel were allowed to visit her husband for 45 minutes at Cairo's Mazraa prison, a wing inside the Tora prison complex where he is being held in a cell with Mr. Mohamed and Shadi Ibrahim, a young student who was also sentenced to three years in the case.
The Canadian embassy had requested an exceptional visit, but it was because of Ms. Omara's own efforts and pleas on local television, she says, that officials at the interior ministry granted the family early visitation.
"Mohamed told me he had a flashback at this verdict to when he was in the cage the first time, when he and Baher and Peter were holding hands, excited because they thought they would be free," she said. "It was the same this time, he was excited because he felt the same, like things would finally be over.He didn't expect to go back to jail. When they heard the verdict, he told me that he and Baher just hugged for one full minute."
Egyptian officials have lashed out at criticism of the verdict, saying the country's judiciary is an independent institution that cannot be criticized. "Latest judicial verdicts are unrelated to freedom of press, but rather to specific, documented legal violations #AJTrial," said Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson of Egypt's Foreign Ministry on Twitter, the day after the verdict.
"Thousands of Egyptian & foreign journalists are currently working in Egypt with complete freedom #AJTrial," he continued. While press freedom groups rank Egypt among the top 10 jailers of journalists in the world, the government denies any journalist is imprisoned and says those held were arrested for reasons unrelated to their work.
While the government says the verdicts were not politicized, supporters of the journalists say no evidence was presented in court to prove their guilt. A technical committee appointed by the court seemingly debunked accusations they had broadcast false news. The judge also hinged the claim that they were not journalists on the fact that they were not registered at the Cairo Press Syndicate. However, the syndicate is not open to foreign or broadcast journalists.
"I don't understand what the judge said. Nothing makes sense," Ms. Omara said.
For now, she says she will continue to campaign for a resolution to her husband's ordeal.
"A diplomatic solution is the only answer," she said. "If he has to go through appeals again, it could last longer than he's in prison."
Ms. Omara said that while she believed the Canadian ambassador is doing everything he can, the government of Stephen Harper needs to do more. With an election less than 50 days away in Canada, the verdict on Saturday renewed accusations from Mr. Harper's political opponents that the Conservatives are not doing enough to secure Mr. Fahmy's release.
"The Australian government was successful, and you have Mohamed Soltan, from the Muslim Brotherhood, who was a dual citizen, just like Mohamed, who was deported," said Ms. Omara, referring to the American-Egyptian citizen and son of prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Saleh Soltan. "So how can it be that Canada can't get Mohamed deported?"
Ms. Omara now feels a sense of urgency in securing her husband's release. Mr. Fahmy's father had been recently diagnosed with cancer and her husband wanted to be by his side.
"I get extremely angry when people tell me it's okay, let's wait for the appeal," she said. "What about this person? They took his nationality, he has a permanent disability, he's emotionally destroyed," she said. "I hope that Canada understands the emotional challenge we are going through and that we've had enough, he's a journalist who was just doing his job."