Jailed Australian journalist to seek deportation from Egypt

Brisbane: Al Jazeera's Australian journalist Peter Greste will seek his deportation from Egypt following a court order to retry his case, his family said Friday.

Egypt's Court of Cassation (which usually does not re-examine the facts of a case but is only competent to verify the laws' interpretation) Thursday ordered the retrial of Greste and two of his Al Jazeera colleagues, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, Xinhua reported.

The journalists are accused of spreading false news and supporting the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

The three have been in prison for over a year. They were first arrested in December, 2013. They were convicted in June, 2014 with Fahmy, holding Egyptian and Canadian citizenship, and Greste, a former BBC correspondent from Australia, jailed for seven years and Mohamed for 10 years.

Greste's parents - father Juris and mother Lois - said they were now pinning hopes for their son's freedom on his chances of being deported before a second trial.

The family said his deportation option was strengthened because the retrial order meant his status changed from being a convicted person to an accused. "We have big hopes in the deportation process," Juris Greste told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Greste's brothers, Michael and Andrew, said while they wanted the court to acquit the journalists, the order for a retrial was the next best outcome.

"We believe that there is now a window of opportunity for the Egyptian president to exercise his presidential power under the decree," Andrew Greste told reporters in a press conference here.