Is the Peter Greste verdict morally wrong?

I am not in any special position to comment on the decision to gaol Peter Greste and his co-accused for ‘defaming Egypt’ in that I do not have access to any information not available to anyone who reads the news. So this post is based on what has been reported in the media. Now, the judge’s action in handing down his verdict was not an innocuous or neutral one in that it affected no one, so it can be evaluated from the moral point of view. Notice that there is a difference between saying that his action was morally wrong, supposing that it was, and that the judge was morally responsible for wrong-doing. That is a topic I shall discuss again, on the pages What is Morality?. Here I want to simply address whether the decision was morally wrong, and in particular, if it is why is that so?

1 To begin with, if a law is itself unfair or unjust, then convictions under that law can, for that reason alone, be said to be morally wrong. This is because the person in question has been harmed unfairly, assuming that conviction entails harm. In the past, and in the present, many laws are unfair and unjust; for instance, all those based on any form of racial discrimination. It is not at all clear to me that a charge of ‘defaming Egypt’ could be fair and just. It certainly seems that there is a not so well hidden agenda here concerning the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that held office until the military coup. The charge seems to be that reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood amounts to defaming Egypt, and it is hard to see how that makes sense.

2. So defaming Egypt’ seems in this case to be to do with reporting activities of that party, simply stating facts. Suppose that this is a law which is not unfair or unjust. But it is certainly appears vague, so perhaps it has been misapplied in this instance, and simply reporting certain facts about the Muslin Brotherhood does not constitute any kind of defamation, then the verdict is morally wrong on this ground as well: it is not now the case that the law is unfair, it is that it has been misapplied. This is a second and distinct sense in which the verdict is morally wrong.

3. One hears that the Saudi Arabia, a very rich and therefore highly influential state in the region, is worried in case the Muslim Brotherhood regains power in Egypt and that Saudi Arabia has had influenced the outcome of the trial. This is of concern in and of itself, when one state can influence the way another state chooses to apply its laws, but it would not (yet) amount to another sense or way in which the judgement was morally wrong. Rather it amounts to an explanation as to why the judge acted in the way he did. It could, however, be said to be another sense or dimension of moral wrong-doing if Saudi Arabia was instrumental in the hading down of the seven to ten year sentences. It was hoped, and believed by many, that Greste and his co-accused would be acquitted: that they were not and have been severely treated seems to have been due to outside influence.

I think therefore that there are three distinct ways in which the judgement could be said to be morally wrong. I do not think it was morally wrong because Greste and his colleagues were journalists. I do not think that the fact they were journalists by profession makes any difference. Nor do I think the judgement was morally wrong because it is always morally wrong to punish someone from saying what ever they want to say. In other words, I do not think there is an inviolable right to say what ever one likes. We might agree people should not be free to express any opinion, but nevertheless always be free to state any fact. I’m not sure I would agree with that claim either. There is nevertheless the issue of what must be in place for there to be a free and democratic society, and it can be argued that one of the things necessary is the presumption of free speech and a free press.

To my mind the most important matter which this sad case reminds us of, yet again, is the inestimable value of the rule of law, of just and fair laws applied without prejudice by honest people. The rule of law must be above politics, because it is all there is that protects individuals from the power of the state. The poor people of Egypt have never really lived under the rule of law: the basic freedoms written down in the various versions of the Egyptian Constitution have invariably been suspended by specious ‘emergency laws’ that have been proclaimed by the mostly military dictators that have held power in that country since the overturning of the monarchy. The lesson for us who are lucky enough to live in democratic countries is that we must not allow any governments to weaken the laws that protect us from arbitrary state power, such as is so wrongfully being imposed on Peter Greste