19 February 2015

Speakers at the Frontline Club are always enthusiastically applauded but few receive a welcome as warm as that afforded Peter Greste, the Australian journalist fresh from prison in Egypt. The Club’s roomful of fellow hacks cheer as he takes to the stage just over two weeks after his deportation from the country where he and two of his colleagues had been incarcerated for 400 days. After many months of glimpsing only brief television pictures of them caged in a courtroom, the sight of Greste free and healthy in London is emotional for many.

He beams throughout most of his interview with Sue Turton but becomes more sombre when talking of Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, the two other members of the ‘Al Jazeera Three’. Both have been released on bail but remain in Egypt. As an Australian citizen with the government of Latvia also negotiating on his behalf (his father is Latvian), Greste was lucky enough to be deported. The ultimate fate of the two left behind is yet to be decided and it is clear that this still weighs upon his mind.

The rest of his ordeal, however, seems to have bothered him less than might be expected. He admits to periods of anger as he initially spent up to 23 hours a day in a confined cell and to finding that sometimes he needed to narrow his horizons in order to cope – sometimes focusing on making it through to the next week, sometimes to the next day, during really black periods to the end of an hour. Yet overall he endured those 400 days remarkably stoically.

For Greste, there were two key techniques to ensuring that he did not succumb to the “massive mindfuck” he warns the incarcerated mind can dangerously slide into. One was recognising that his arrest, charge and trial were not personal but “a contest between the Egyptian government and the institution of the media,” and therefore it was “a principle, not something to get cranky about.” The second method was maintaining all levels of fitness; “physical, psychological, spiritual, intellectual.” Meditation helped, as did walking sometimes 10-12km a day pacing up and down a corridor a mere 30m long and performing the 5BX program – five basic exercises suitable for those in confined spaces. “Want to know a good way to lose weight?” he asks cheerfully. “Spend a year in an Egyptian prison.”

Undertaking a Master’s Degree in International Relations with Griffith University provided structure to the “formless lump of time” that the days could become. The university printed all the course materials and readings; Australian embassy staff passed them to him in prison and he wrote his assignments in longhand. He says, deadpan, “I did better than I expected,” and is continuing with the course.

On receiving sympathy for his ordeal, he says “right now, I don’t feel traumatised” and there is no reason to disbelieve him. He intends to return to reporting and is passionate in defending the rights of journalists to report the news without interference from governments or other organisations. He sees attacks on journalism as attacks on wider free society; something that must always be challenged.

However, although he describes times when he did push boundaries or challenge governments in pursuing a story, he insists that at the time of his arrest this was not the case. He was proceeding as he always had, under the impression that “as long as you play with a relatively straight bat, you’ll be safe.” On this occasion the adage was proved wrong. His advice to young journalists this evening includes a stark “don’t push it,” an unusual recommendation for a foreign correspondent and one it is difficult to imagine him making prior to his incarceration. Greste may not have been traumatised by his time in Egypt, but he is not exactly the same person he was before his arrest.

Journalism too is changing. Greste points out the dangers, particularly for freelancers, on whom even the biggest news agencies are increasingly relying. It has been easy for the disappearance of local journalists in places like Syria and Iraq to fall through the cracks, but the case of the Al Jazeera Three has propelled news reporters into becoming the story themselves. Greste is free. We are thrilled to have him back, but the plight of the remaining two still not yet quite out of the woods and many others in even worse situations should perhaps continue to traumatise all of us.