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Egypt Court Postpones Al Jazeera Journalists' Trial Again


Al-Jazeera English journalists Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, right, and Egyptian Baher Mohammed leave a court after a hearing in their retrial near Tora prison in Cairo, Egypt, March 8, 2015.
Al-Jazeera English journalists Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, right, and Egyptian Baher Mohammed leave a court after a hearing in their retrial near Tora prison in Cairo, Egypt, March 8, 2015.

An Egyptian court postponed the retrial of Al Jazeera television journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed until March 19.

The decision Sunday comes after a brief hearing for acting bureau chief Fahmy and Egyptian producer Mohammed. They were freed last month awaiting trial, though they've had to check in with police daily. Their first hearing on Feb. 23 also was postponed.

Arrested in December 2013, the pair are charged with aiding a terrorist organization, a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fahmy, a naturalized Canadian who gave up his Egyptian citizenship, expressed his frustration outside the court.

“We come here and we respect the court, but it's very unusual that the witnesses don't come twice in a row, and I see it as a insult to the judiciary here and it's really a legal limbo and we're caught in it," he told Reuters.

Mohamed said the legal process was too slow.

“It's taking too much time, it's taking too much time, it's hard to get anything nowadays because I don't have any proof to say that I'm Baher Mohamed, so I'm working on it, but it's taking too much time," he also told Reuters.

A third Al Jazeera journalist, Australian Peter Greste, was deported earlier in February.

Material for this report came from Reuters and AP.

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