Al-Jazeera Journalist Peter Greste, Sentenced To Prison By Egyptian Government, Is An Award-Winning International Journalist

Peter Greste, one of three Al-Jazeera reporters sentenced Monday by an Egyptian court to seven years in prison for allegedly aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, is an award-winning journalist whose extensive international experience includes work in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Greste, who holds dual Australian and Latvian citizenship, won a Peabody Award in 2011 for a documentary on Somalia.

Greste and two of his colleagues, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, and Baher Mohamed, who was sentenced to 10 years behind bars, have been under arrest since December 2013.

The 49-year-old journalist has a long and distinguished career. He worked for the BBC and Reuters in Kabul in 1995 and the following year moved to Belgrade to write for Reuters. Greste then worked for BBC News 24 in London before moving to Mexico City and subsequently Santiago, Chile, to write for the BBC. In 2001 he returned to Afghanistan to report on the war. Three years later he moved to Mombasa, Kenya, and then to Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Australian government blasted Egypt for the prison sentence.

"The Australian government is shocked at the verdict in the Peter Greste case," Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, said in a statement.

"We are deeply dismayed by the fact that a sentence has been imposed. We are appalled by the severity of it. Peter Greste is a respected Australian journalist. He was not there to support the Muslim Brotherhood. We respect the outcome of the recent elections in Egypt and will now initiate contact at the highest levels in the new Egyptian government to see whether we can gain some kind of intervention from the new government."