Saturday Magazine

Professor Peter Greste is an award-winning journalist, author and academic who spent fifteen years with the BBC before he joined Al Jazeera as East Africa correspondent. In 2013, he went to Egypt to help cover the unfolding political crisis but two weeks into the assignment, security agents raided his hotel room and arrested him and two colleagues. They were charged with terrorism offences, and in the subsequent trial they became champions of press freedom. All three were eventually convicted and sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison, before being released under intense international pressure.

Peter saw his trial and conviction as an extreme example of the way journalism was being attacked in the War on Terror globally, and wrote about his experience in The First Casualty, He joined the University of Queensland as UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communication in 2018 where he continues to campaign for the freedom of journalists.

In honour of his campaigning, Peter has been given numerous awards including a Walkely (2014); the British Royal Television Society’s Judges Award (2015); the Australian Human Rights Council Medal (2016); the RSL’s ANZAC Peace Prize (2016); and the Australian Press Council’s Press Freedom Medal (2018).