Interview with Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste

In his first interview since his release from an Egyptian prison after 400 days in captivity, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste called on the authorities in Cairo to release two of his colleagues still being held. 

“I … feel incredible angst about my colleagues, leaving them behind,” Greste said Monday. “Amidst all this relief, I still feel a sense of concern and real sense of worry because if it's appropriate for me, if it's right for me to be free, then its right for all of them to be freed.”

Egyptian authorities deported Greste by plane to Cyprus on Sunday. 

Two other Al Jazeera journalists — Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy — are still imprisoned in Egypt.

The three were sentenced in 2013 to 7-years in prison on charges including spreading lies to help a terrorist organization — a reference to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood; Mohamed received an additional three years for a charge of weapons possession. 

Greste said that his release is “a really big step forward” for Egypt and that he hopes the country "keeps going down this path" with regard to his colleagues.

Focusing on keeping “fit physically, mentally and spiritually” kept him going through the long period of confinement and uncertainty.

“I made a very conscious effort to deal with all three of those things,” he said. “To try and keep fit, running in a very limited space, to keep up an exercise program, to keep mentally fit with study and spiritually fit too, with meditation. I think through all of that it was a way of enforcing a kind of discipline on myself and dealing with each day as it came. And hopefully, touch wood, I haven't come out of it too damaged.”

He said he was taken by surprise by his sudden release. “I wasn't expecting [to be released] at all. I woke up thinking of the campaign ahead of us, really feeling that we were going to have to spend an extended stretch in prison.” 

But that day, “I went for a run, and the prison warden called me over and told me, ‘It’s time to pack your stuff.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You're going.’ I asked, ‘To where? Another prison?’ He told me the embassy is coming. ‘They’ll be here in an hour. Get your stuff and go.’”

“I can't tell you the real mix of emotion boiling inside,” Greste said. “Like I said, a sense of relief and excitement, but also a real stress of having to say goodbye to my colleagues and friends and people who’ve really become family inside that prison.”

The bittersweet moment capped a long period of imprisonment, during which, he said, he grew close to his two colleagues. 

“When you spend 400 days in such close proximity with people, you get to know them really well. It was a really difficult moment walking out and leaving the prison, saying goodbye to those guys, not knowing how much longer they will have to put up with this.”

Baher and Mohamed are “my brothers. There couldn’t be any other way,” he said. “Fahmy is an extraordinary professional, a dedicated journalist, very passionate and a strong-willed character.”   

“Baher is one of the most amazing family men I’ve ever met,” Greste said. “In fact, if anyone has suffered out of all of this, it is Baher. He has a wife and three children, one of whom was born while he was prison. It was incredibly tough for him, as someone so devoted to his family, to have to be where he is, knowing he’s innocent, that this is a huge mistake and only being able to see them on family visits and knowing now that he’s going to have to spend an indeterminate period behind bars.”

Al Jazeera continues to demand the release of its unjustly imprisoned reporters.