Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talked to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: This is part two of my chat with journalist Peter Gresta,
Speaker 1: who was locked up in an Egyptian prison for terrorism offenses.
Speaker 1: In part one, we talked about Peter's career reporting from
Speaker 1: some of the most hostile locations in the world, and
Speaker 1: how is it rested on trumped up charges in Egypt
Speaker 1: for doing his job. In part two, Peter spoke to
Speaker 1: us about his fight for freedom, the ongoing impact from
Speaker 1: his time in prison and his passion for free speech
Speaker 1: and the rights of journalists to do their job. Oh
Speaker 1: one other thing. We also spoke to him about having
Speaker 1: famous Australian actor Richard Roxborough play him in the feature film.
Speaker 1: I came away from our chat inspired. Peter's a pretty
Speaker 1: impressive person. Have a listen. Peter Gresser, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: part two of I Catchkillers. I've just made some adjustments
Speaker 1: to some of the questions I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you do you shot me down? And it's probably the
Speaker 1: most silliest question of asked on the podcast, what happened
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement? To which you answered nothing? You've been
Speaker 1: so clear. Can you expand on that? I joke and
Speaker 1: we joke about about the time you have in prison.
Speaker 1: But I think you've got to see the light in
Speaker 1: the darkness, and a lot of people have sat in
Speaker 1: your seat that have been through some difficult times. You've
Speaker 1: got to find the human that keep you, keep you surviving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do. It's not always easy if you can
Speaker 2: get into a very dark place. But I think I
Speaker 2: found two that it was. The secret was not to
Speaker 2: take it personally. If I took it personally, then I'd
Speaker 2: get into a very dark, dark place of anger and resentment.
Speaker 2: But it was about that. If I saw it as
Speaker 2: as as an attack on not on anything that I'd done,
Speaker 2: but on what I'd represented, then I could say it
Speaker 2: is something that was that was it was a fight
Speaker 2: worth worth taking.
Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying. In fact, I pulled the
Speaker 1: looks like we're working in kohouts here that I pulled
Speaker 1: out a quote that touches on that. Then I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about that, and you mentioned it in Part
Speaker 1: one briefly, but just a quote, a quote from your
Speaker 1: your book which in context was a turning point in
Speaker 1: prison for you where you thought, Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: it's about. Just the quote out and get you to
Speaker 1: expand on that, if you're could please suddenly. I find
Speaker 1: great comfort in our situation. The idea that we have
Speaker 1: come to stand for something much larger than ourselves mean
Speaker 1: we have to fight on behalf of that bigger thing.
Speaker 1: It isn't just Peter Grest, Muhammad Fami and Baya Muhammad
Speaker 1: who are in the cage. It is every journalist working
Speaker 1: in Egypt. More broadly, it's every journalist working with any
Speaker 1: within any regime that considers using these kind of tactics
Speaker 1: to silent public debate and critical voices. Defending that cause
Speaker 1: is not just a heavy responsibility, it's hugely empowering one. Now,
Speaker 1: I think that is to the point that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. It suddenly becomes external,
Speaker 2: It suddenly takes on significance and meaning that I hadn't
Speaker 2: that that would otherwise have made the whole time in
Speaker 2: prison time wasted. I spend four hundred days locked up.
Speaker 2: That would have been four hundred day in my life
Speaker 2: that I'd never get back. But in seeing it in
Speaker 2: those terms, it meant that I it became a struggle
Speaker 2: for that high principle. And I remember there's a there's
Speaker 2: an extraordinary book that I was that I ended up
Speaker 2: reading in prison once we were alloud, books called Man's
Speaker 2: Search for Meaning by a guy called Victor Frankel. And
Speaker 2: Frankel is an incredible character. He was a survivor of
Speaker 2: the concentration camps in World War Two. He went in
Speaker 2: as a Jewish neurologist, as a neuroscientist, and so I
Speaker 2: had a particular interest in the way people's brains worked.
Speaker 2: And he wrote the book as a way of trying
Speaker 2: to understand the differences between those who survived and those
Speaker 2: who didn't. And he said that he quoted nietzschee as saying,
Speaker 2: he who has a why can bear anyhow. In other words,
Speaker 2: as long as you have a reason that's externality you
Speaker 2: for enduring the suffering that you're going through, you can
Speaker 2: put up with pretty much anything. He was saying. It
Speaker 2: can't be money, it can't be selfish, he said, God
Speaker 2: sometimes is that provides that, but more often than not,
Speaker 2: it's survival for a family. For a lot of the
Speaker 2: concentration camp inmates, it was survival as a form of
Speaker 2: resistance to the Nazis, to the genocide that they're experiencing.
Speaker 2: For me, it became a fight for press freedom. Now
Speaker 2: I know that sounds a little bit pious, a little
Speaker 2: bit sort of arrogant, but that's the way I came
Speaker 2: to see it, and that gave me a sense of
Speaker 2: purpose and meaning and direction and a kind of vision
Speaker 2: that helped they think, helped me get it get through.
Speaker 1: I can understand what you're saying, because it would easily,
Speaker 1: it would be easy to turn it in on yourself
Speaker 1: and wallow in the self pity and why has this
Speaker 1: happened to me? You're thinking, Okay, there's a broader here,
Speaker 1: and that can be very powerful to motivate you to
Speaker 1: find the depth that you didn't think you had.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I just yeah, thinking thinking about it, I think all
Speaker 1: the way you have to evolve and look deeply into
Speaker 1: yourself to find find the answers to get through this.
Speaker 1: But I just want to break down the whole period
Speaker 1: of time when you're in prison, and I've got a
Speaker 1: couple of areas I want to cover to get proper
Speaker 1: legal representation. That was a nightmare in itself. Talk us
Speaker 1: through that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so Al Jazeera hired a lawyer and
Speaker 2: they were there for a while until they rather spectacularly
Speaker 2: resigned in the middle of the trial.
Speaker 1: They made it very public statement the way it was done.
Speaker 2: To extraordinary public statement, and it was very damaging. But
Speaker 2: to be honest, Gary, I really I was in a
Speaker 2: lot of stress around that. But I also realized that
Speaker 2: actually our legal representation was beside the point a first
Speaker 2: year law student could have defended us, that the evidence
Speaker 2: against us was so paper thin, was not existent?
Speaker 1: Really what was it? Specific charges? Could break down of
Speaker 1: the charges.
Speaker 2: So we've been accused of aiding and a betting a
Speaker 2: terrorist organization, being members of a terrorist organization, advocating terrorist ideology,
Speaker 2: broadcasting false news with intent to undermine national security, financing terrorism.
Speaker 2: I mean, these were about as serious as you could
Speaker 2: get short of actually pulling a pin on a grenade
Speaker 2: in a crowded room, short of a physical terrorist attack.
Speaker 2: We were basically agents of a terrorist.
Speaker 1: And the financing terrorism was they found some money that
Speaker 1: you had that was your living expenses in an area
Speaker 1: where the cash wasn't going to get you through, and
Speaker 1: you've got some cash from your employer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, I mean the narrative I think that as
Speaker 2: far as I can tell, I never really got to
Speaker 2: the bottom of it. But the narrative was that we
Speaker 2: would occasionally buy footage freelance footage from camera up from
Speaker 2: guys that were operating that were covering the demonstrations that
Speaker 2: were either too dangerous for us to get to or
Speaker 2: that we physically just couldn't didn't have time to cover
Speaker 2: all of the protests. And the theory was that those
Speaker 2: guys couldn't have covered particularly Muslim Brotherhood protests unless they
Speaker 2: are members of the Brotherhood, and so by paying them
Speaker 2: for the footage, we were somehow financing terrorism.
Speaker 1: It's creative thinking from law enforcement.
Speaker 2: It's quite a long bow. But you know, as far
Speaker 2: as I can tell, that's how that charge came through.
Speaker 1: And did you get to access to your brief of evidence?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, because that's a pretty much a cornerstone of the
Speaker 1: legal system here, that the prosecute that makes the allegations
Speaker 1: and presents a brief of evidence and then you get
Speaker 1: to who were so sect.
Speaker 2: So he's he's one of the things to give you
Speaker 2: an idea of just how crazy it was to get
Speaker 2: access to some of the to the images that they
Speaker 2: had in there in the evidence. We had to pay
Speaker 2: for it because there was apparently a processing fee, and
Speaker 2: we said, look, we wanted we wanted to get all
Speaker 2: of the images that they had, and the figure they
Speaker 2: came up with was literally in the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars. They couldn't understand it, like, what the how
Speaker 2: the hell do you come up with with that kind
Speaker 2: of number, until we realized that one second of video
Speaker 2: footage it's like film, it is made up of frames
Speaker 2: of twenty four frames, and so they were counting each
Speaker 2: frame as an individual image, and so if you wanted
Speaker 2: five minutes of footage that they had as supposedly as evidence,
Speaker 2: we were going to have to pay for literally thousands
Speaker 2: and thousands of images. Absolutely insane, and of course we
Speaker 2: coldn't affortunately.
Speaker 1: I think you've been unfair there, you alos, so there's
Speaker 1: foto copying costs. I'm with you on certain things, but
Speaker 1: that's crazy, isn't it. So each each frame of the
Speaker 1: role of film. Okay, so you didn't get access to
Speaker 1: your brief The system I think you described as just
Speaker 1: it wasn't rigid. It was just could swing anyway one
Speaker 1: of them. It's almost like someone could get up. And
Speaker 1: I think there was an example of a witness giving
Speaker 1: evidence that it really just didn't stand up to any
Speaker 1: the weakest cross examination, but it was just dismissed. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but you said Peter was here six
Speaker 1: months ago, when he's we can present evidence that you
Speaker 1: weren't in the country six months ago, and that's just
Speaker 1: dismissed with, oh, well, yeah, we all make mistakes, but yeah,
Speaker 1: move on.
Speaker 2: That was it. We were we'd been accused of being
Speaker 2: involved with the Rabber massacre, which had happened six months earlier,
Speaker 2: and at that time I was in Sudan, in South Sudan,
Speaker 2: and they had my passport that had all of the
Speaker 2: entry and exit stamps both in Egypt and also the
Speaker 2: entry and exit stamps into South Sudan. So it was
Speaker 2: blinding the obvious, and we were prepared and We're hoping
Speaker 2: to present evidence of the stories that I'd produced from
Speaker 2: South Sudan at the time of that massacre.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking from a prosecuting point of view, that
Speaker 1: would take a hole in the brief a little bit
Speaker 1: iry to.
Speaker 2: Knock the evidence out of court. But no, they simply
Speaker 2: said no. He was questioned about why, about the contradiction.
Speaker 2: He just he kept saying I don't remember.
Speaker 1: And describe the court saying for us, are you are
Speaker 1: you in there in the dock?
Speaker 2: Are you yes? So the docs was actually a cage,
Speaker 2: a pretty intimidating cage, and it was designed it It
Speaker 2: was a really big court room. It was more like
Speaker 2: a theater, sort of raked seating, really really tall, tall,
Speaker 2: tall ceilings, more like a cathedral. I guess in a
Speaker 2: way had that sense of presence, and I think it
Speaker 2: was designed to give them a sense be intimidating, and
Speaker 2: as I said, because we were in the cage, I
Speaker 2: think it was designed to make us look like we
Speaker 2: were dangerous, dangerous terrorists that were a physical threat, even
Speaker 2: if we should be, you know, have the opportunity to
Speaker 2: leap across the court room.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you can't trust these terrorists, so spies,
Speaker 1: you don't know what's going on. People that support your family, friends,
Speaker 1: And how important was that when you're going through the
Speaker 1: whole process, the prison, the battles through the court, How
Speaker 1: important to you was the support that and were you
Speaker 1: were aware how much support you've had?
Speaker 2: So they were their presence of physical presence in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: My brothers were there throughout the trial. That was really
Speaker 2: really important to know that they had my back, that
Speaker 2: we had people outside in Cairo, outside the cell that
Speaker 2: were working to make sure that they were doing everything
Speaker 2: they could, whether it was diplomatically or legally or politically.
Speaker 2: You asked, you mentioned about the broader campaign, and I
Speaker 2: had a vague idea that there was a lot going on,
Speaker 2: but honestly, I had no real understanding of the scale
Speaker 2: of the campaign.
Speaker 1: You had some very heavy hitters in your corner, not
Speaker 1: just your corner, the whole whole group of you that
Speaker 1: got locked up at US. Even Obama was making comments
Speaker 1: about it. And certainly you had the support from over here,
Speaker 1: from the Foreign Affairs minister and everyone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did. And again I didn't realize it even
Speaker 2: just just how how engaged Obama was. I saw him afterwards.
Speaker 2: I was at an event in Washington, the FIGE, the
Speaker 2: White House Correspondence and Your Dinner, and I met Obama
Speaker 2: before the dinner and I introduced myself and he said, ah,
Speaker 2: he said, you're that guy. He said, yeah, you wrote
Speaker 2: two letters from prison to describing what you were going
Speaker 2: through as an attack on press freedom. He said, I
Speaker 2: saw those letters. I read them. He said, they really
Speaker 2: helped me and understand he said, from that point, he said,
Speaker 2: I always raised your case whenever I spoke to President CC.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so you had the support and also your colleagues.
Speaker 1: I think your colleagues unified to make sure your story
Speaker 1: wasn't forgotten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, journalists, journalist colleagues around the world. Yeah, and we
Speaker 2: were very lucky. I mean, it was extraordinary the amount
Speaker 2: of the amount of support that we had. And that was,
Speaker 2: you know, partly because I think I and my colleagues family.
Speaker 2: We'd worked across a large number of big international news organizations.
Speaker 2: I'd worked for the BBC, of course, and for our
Speaker 2: GAZEA and you know, I had a lot of colleagues.
Speaker 2: I'd worked for Reuters, I had a lot of colleagues
Speaker 2: here in Australia that knew my work. Family had worked
Speaker 2: for CNN and others, And so there was a large
Speaker 2: cohort of people around the world who knew us and
Speaker 2: knew our work and the integrity of our work. But
Speaker 2: it also recognized, as I did, that our case was
Speaker 2: about them as well, that they needed to fight this
Speaker 2: on for their own sake as much as.
Speaker 1: For ours, and that that support, the external support than
Speaker 1: from people in powerful positions. Could that filter through to you?
Speaker 1: Did you understand or have you only appreciate it? You release?
Speaker 2: I really only appreciate. I mean again, I was aware
Speaker 2: of it, but not I didn't really fully understand it
Speaker 2: until I was released and saw just how enormous that
Speaker 2: campaign was and how many people were invested in.
Speaker 1: It, the scale of it. Disagreements with your calcus. And
Speaker 1: when I say disagreements, if you put anyone in the
Speaker 1: room long enough there's going to be disagreements, but there
Speaker 1: was a couple of things about the strategy, So the
Speaker 1: way that you should approached do you want to just
Speaker 1: break that down and.
Speaker 2: So as you say, you when you're twenty three hours
Speaker 2: inside a concrete box with somebody, then you're going to
Speaker 2: find their edges. And that's how it was. For It
Speaker 2: was very, very difficult to be stuck in that kind
Speaker 2: of environment. We didn't know each other beforehand before I
Speaker 2: arrived in Cairo, so you're still just getting to know
Speaker 2: each other when you're in that environment. But Famy in
Speaker 2: particular and I had very very different understandings of what
Speaker 2: was taking place. Fami saw this as political. He saw
Speaker 2: what was happening as the result of Egypt's suspicions about
Speaker 2: Katari interference in Egypt. The Katar had been accused of
Speaker 2: supporting the Brotherhood. Because we worked for a Katari organization,
Speaker 2: we were therefore a part of that conspiracy, and Fami
Speaker 2: felt that if that was the case, then the solution
Speaker 2: was to distance ourselves from Qatar, from our Jazeera and
Speaker 2: to align ourselves as with Egypt to make up to
Speaker 2: portray ourselves as friends of Egypt. Fami felt that that
Speaker 2: was to play the political game that was inevitably the
Speaker 2: real reason why we were there. I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I saw this as an attack on press freedom. I
Speaker 2: felt that if there was, if there was genuinely an
Speaker 2: issue around Katari malfisans, and I was the last person
Speaker 2: to come after to make that case. There are plenty
Speaker 2: of other Al Jazeera journalists who had much deeper connections
Speaker 2: with the Brotherhood. No, none of them sinister, but you
Speaker 2: could easily, much more easily have made a case that
Speaker 2: it had nothing really to do with the evidence or
Speaker 2: to do with Katari interference. Again, if you wanted to
Speaker 2: make that case, then an Australian journalist had only been
Speaker 2: in the country for a few weeks was again not
Speaker 2: the right person to make that case. And so I
Speaker 2: felt that this was about press freedom. They came after
Speaker 2: us because we were politically convenient, because they had that narrative.
Speaker 2: But I felt that we needed to fight this on
Speaker 2: as an attack on press freedom. And the problem is
Speaker 2: that those two narratives were irreconcilable. You couldn't run those
Speaker 2: defenses in parallel. You couldn't start down nine track and
Speaker 2: you couldn't start down one track, and suddenly change course
Speaker 2: and so, and the stakes were really really really high,
Speaker 2: Like if we got this, got this, got this debate wrong,
Speaker 2: if we got the strategy wrong, then we were going
Speaker 2: to We're going to suffer for it. Fami, I thought
Speaker 2: Famy was being really cynical in playing, in playing that
Speaker 2: political game and dangerous. Family thought I was being hopelessly
Speaker 2: naive and taking a very Western view of a fundamentally
Speaker 2: Arabic Middle Eastern crisis. Yeah, it was we we we came.
Speaker 2: We came almost to blows on a few occasions, very very.
Speaker 1: Tough after you were convicted, because the sequence of events
Speaker 1: in the custody time you were in custody, You went
Speaker 1: to trial, you were convicted of it, and then you
Speaker 1: had an appeal coming up, or you had to lodge
Speaker 1: for an appeal, waited a month or so to find
Speaker 1: out whever that appeal would be allowed. And there was
Speaker 1: some very heated discussions as I understand, about whether they
Speaker 1: go on the hunger strike, and that not just one,
Speaker 1: but many of the people that you were with thought
Speaker 1: that would be the way to let's force this issue.
Speaker 1: We're not staying here any longer. Well to talk us
Speaker 1: through that, because that's a that's a heavy that was.
Speaker 2: That was another very very difficult period. So I spoke
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier Abdolfat, who was this incredible guy I
Speaker 2: met at Lementorum, one of the earlier the first prison
Speaker 2: that I was in, and he knew and understood about
Speaker 2: hunger strikes, and a couple of the points that he
Speaker 2: made was that if you're going to start a hunger strike,
Speaker 2: you have to have the moral high ground, you have
Speaker 2: to have all of the process on your side. You've
Speaker 2: got to be demanding only things that the authorities have
Speaker 2: the capacity to give you. You can't simply demand free because
Speaker 2: they're not going to do that. They're never going to
Speaker 2: do it. If they acquiesce and they give you your
Speaker 2: freedom because you went on hunger strike, then every prisoner
Speaker 2: was going to go.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. That makes sense.
Speaker 2: So you've got to be You've got to be demanding
Speaker 2: things that are achievable and that are your rights to have.
Speaker 2: The trouble was that the process, the trial and our
Speaker 2: appeal dragged on for such a long time that a
Speaker 2: lot of the other guys that were in our case
Speaker 2: were wanting to go on a hunger strike. They felt
Speaker 2: that all of our supporters. They said that all of
Speaker 2: our supporters outside prison are fighting for us. We have
Speaker 2: to fight inside. We have to be seen to be
Speaker 2: doing something inside as well. We're demanding our freedom. And
Speaker 2: I could see why they were frustrated, why they wanted
Speaker 2: to do it. But I felt, I agreed with the
Speaker 2: love that the timing was wrong. We were still within
Speaker 2: the process. We were still within the time frames for
Speaker 2: that process to play out. It was dragging out forever.
Speaker 2: And even if we didn't consider that they were being serious,
Speaker 2: that they were just stringing us along, it was too
Speaker 2: early to start a hunger strike because we couldn't. They
Speaker 2: were never going to give us what we were demanding.
Speaker 2: It was. It was performative, and I didn't I disagreed
Speaker 2: with it. But the trouble was that I also knew
Speaker 2: that if I joined the hunger strike then it would
Speaker 2: get huge amounts of potential the white guy, because I
Speaker 2: was the white guy, I was the outsider. If they
Speaker 2: went on the hunger strike without me, it would have
Speaker 2: been a meaningless it would have it would have disappeared
Speaker 2: into the footnote in the in the local newspapers.
Speaker 1: It was a hard position to be in for yourself.
Speaker 1: I agree with your logic and one hundred percent agree
Speaker 1: if you're going on the hunger strike, but they're simple responsible.
Speaker 1: We're waiting to see if the appeal comes up or
Speaker 1: they're not going to just open the prison doors.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You're being you're being petulant, you're being premature, you're
Speaker 2: being ridiculous. You've got no rights to demand this.
Speaker 1: But your the strength that you had was in the unity.
Speaker 1: And then if the others went on the hunger strike
Speaker 1: and you didn't, yeah, I would make life very hard
Speaker 1: for you. And if you spent spent the rest of
Speaker 1: the time locked up with these people.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say I was afraid of the
Speaker 2: hunger struck, and in fact, on the day that I
Speaker 2: was released, I was. I decided that we have to
Speaker 2: start a hunger strike because the type that moment had
Speaker 2: come that there was an appropriate point in which they
Speaker 2: were screwing. I was convinced I was screwing around it.
Speaker 1: That's when the appeals gone through and the conviction was upheld.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, the conviction being overturned. Retral had been ordered, right, Sorry,
Speaker 2: So to walk you through it that basically we'd been
Speaker 2: a cute we'd been we'd been.
Speaker 1: Convicted, yep.
Speaker 2: We appealed the conviction. We won the appeal yep. Although
Speaker 2: the Courtifussation agreed to hear the appeal. When they finally
Speaker 2: heard it, they overturned the conviction on a technicality in
Speaker 2: order to retrial. We weren't released. We're still in prison,
Speaker 2: but they'd ordered a retrus starting again the courts exactly
Speaker 2: the whole process again. The courts had thirty days to
Speaker 2: name a new date for the start of the retrial,
Speaker 2: and at day thirty one we've still heard nothing. And
Speaker 2: that was the point at which I thought, right, this
Speaker 2: is the moment we have to start the hunger strike
Speaker 2: because they're screwing around with us. We're now in in
Speaker 2: clear clear air that there's no process left for us.
Speaker 1: We have got a legitimate cause, We've got a legitimate
Speaker 1: egible that you could criticize and say, this has been
Speaker 1: done to us.
Speaker 2: This is why we're on strokes exactly, we demand our rights. Right.
Speaker 2: But up to that point I didn't see that we
Speaker 2: had we had that moral high ground, we had that
Speaker 2: that that right, that opportunity to actually start the hunger strike.
Speaker 1: Well, you were taking it seriously. You even talked about,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize this. With a hunger strike, you're
Speaker 1: better off preparing yourself before you start the strike, because
Speaker 1: if it's just cut off you straight away, you're going
Speaker 1: to do more damage than if you were Wean yourself
Speaker 1: off food before you start the hunger strike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, your body has to. You have to ease
Speaker 2: your body into it. If you simply go cold turkey
Speaker 2: on food because people seem to think that you've got
Speaker 2: a sort of stock of energy, then it helps you.
Speaker 2: Helps you run run into the into.
Speaker 1: A huge meal and they just stop eating.
Speaker 2: Doesn't work well.
Speaker 1: It learns your parents came to visit you. That must
Speaker 1: have been hard for you. Had your your brother's support
Speaker 1: and the other family members. But when your parents came there,
Speaker 1: But how was that for you?
Speaker 2: That was really hard because and it was hard for
Speaker 2: everybody really. They were only able to visit once every
Speaker 2: two weeks, and even then only for about twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: and you've got no time. It's always a stressful experience
Speaker 2: and for them, I'm aging Granny and gra GRAMPI. Getting
Speaker 2: around Carr to start with is tough, but also going
Speaker 2: into prison, going through all of the security checks and
Speaker 2: so on. Is really intimidating to get into tour, and
Speaker 2: it's a it's a whole it's a whole day's mission.
Speaker 2: They stand around and queues for hours and hours in
Speaker 2: the blazing sun. You've got to be moved from from
Speaker 2: the outer perimeter to the inner perimeters, and you're going
Speaker 2: through countless searches and questions and papers and so on.
Speaker 2: It's a very very intimidating process. And so by the
Speaker 2: time you get in, they're stressed. I'm stressed because I'm
Speaker 2: worried about them. They see my stress, and so what
Speaker 2: you have is this really emotionally intense moment, and that's
Speaker 2: the lasting impression that you've got. You've got nothing, no,
Speaker 2: nothing to correct it, nothing to say, Look, they're actually
Speaker 2: okay for the rest of the two weeks until you
Speaker 2: get to see them again.
Speaker 1: I'm not nothing to aid here, because I can just
Speaker 1: imagine what you go through with that. That must have
Speaker 1: torn you apart inside. Soon your parents go through that.
Speaker 1: So you talk of your release, let's complicate it in itself.
Speaker 1: But you explained that the appeal that's gone past the
Speaker 1: thirty days you were okay. I've got no legitimate argument
Speaker 1: not to join this hunger strike now, So that was
Speaker 1: your mindset and what changed and how did it change?
Speaker 2: I got no idea, so I decided. I woke up
Speaker 2: that morning realized it was day thirty one. I've been
Speaker 2: contemplating before. I felt, if we get to this point,
Speaker 2: then we're going to have to start a hunger strike.
Speaker 2: And my brother was due for a visit that day,
Speaker 2: and so they opened up the cell door and I
Speaker 2: was going to I was basically running in the corridor
Speaker 2: for exercise, and as I was running, I was just
Speaker 2: thinking through the conversation I was going to have to
Speaker 2: have with my brother to let him know. When all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, one of the guards weighs me down
Speaker 2: and says, the boss needs to see you. The warden
Speaker 2: needs to see you. I remember thinking, okay, I'm saying
Speaker 2: to him, I'm going to have to change, because it
Speaker 2: was part of the prison protocol that you don't go
Speaker 2: and see the warden in this stinky running clothes. You
Speaker 2: get changed into basic prison whites. But you know you've
Speaker 2: got a basic show respect. And he said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: go now the boss he's outside in the courtyard. So
Speaker 2: I went out and he said to me, he said,
Speaker 2: I've got news for you. I said, what. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm pack your things. You're you're you're going. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean? He said, you're moving. I'm moving prisons.
Speaker 2: So I've been in every damn prison in your system already.
Speaker 2: And he said, no, no, no, no, no, you're going home.
Speaker 2: The embassy is going to be here in half an hour.
Speaker 2: Get going, Pack you pack your gear, yellow, get going.
Speaker 2: That was it was. It was completely discombobulating and emotionally
Speaker 2: really really difficult because I Gary, I think of it
Speaker 2: a little bit like Christmas, right, You know, if you're
Speaker 2: a kid, you're heading up to Christmas, you think about it,
Speaker 2: you get excited by it, you kind of think about it,
Speaker 2: your fantasize, your imagine one's going to be like you
Speaker 2: wake up but you can barely sleep the night before,
Speaker 2: you wake up at six in the morning and leap
Speaker 2: up and dive into the presence and you have a
Speaker 2: great time. But imagine if all of a sudden you
Speaker 2: wake up and there are these things at the end
Speaker 2: of your bed and you're.
Speaker 1: Just looking around, Look at what the hell's going on?
Speaker 2: Are these really for me? Am I going to get
Speaker 2: into trouble? If I if I, if I touch these things?
Speaker 2: Is this some kind of sick joke? What's what's going
Speaker 2: on here? It was a bit like that. It took
Speaker 2: me a while, It took me a long time, like
Speaker 2: days before I realized that actually, this is this is real,
Speaker 2: this is true, This is this, this, this ordeal is over.
Speaker 1: I can imagine when when you were told or when
Speaker 1: you're informed of that they asked you not to tell
Speaker 1: your fellow inmates that you're going, just that I'm going
Speaker 1: to another prison. You made the decision to tell.
Speaker 2: I had to tell. I can't.
Speaker 1: As I was reading your book, I'm thinking you're a
Speaker 1: low life if you don't tell them. But I think
Speaker 1: their reaction speaks a lot to the of people that
Speaker 1: you're in there with.
Speaker 2: Well, I was. I was really really emotionally torn up
Speaker 2: because I felt so guilty, so guilty about leaving them
Speaker 2: behind because I was again and you mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 2: but I was. I was released because I was the
Speaker 2: white guy, because my name was Peter and not Muhammad,
Speaker 2: and I carried that, I really did. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: it was right for me to be leaving in those
Speaker 2: guys still to be stuck and stuck inside but we'd
Speaker 2: also we had talked about it about the possibility. We
Speaker 2: knew it was always there was always a chance that
Speaker 2: would happen. And we realized that any of them guys
Speaker 2: left behind, the last thing they would want is for
Speaker 2: the person not to leave. You couldn't refuse to leave,
Speaker 2: You couldn't sort of leave your fingernails in the doors
Speaker 2: in the c in the door of the prison cell.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless it was it was still a difficult thing.
Speaker 2: But they they, they all were so overjoyed. I was
Speaker 2: so overjoyed. But the thing we also agreed in the
Speaker 2: previous discuss was that if someone was released and they
Speaker 2: would become the most vocal advocate, that's a spokesman for
Speaker 2: those for the rest of us who have been left behind.
Speaker 2: And that's that's what I decided.
Speaker 1: To do, because I could imagine, you've been through so
Speaker 1: much together of the highs and lowers and basically survived,
Speaker 1: and then you're walking away in that sense of survivor guilt,
Speaker 1: I suppose to a degree, out of the prison. When
Speaker 1: are you're taken virtually from there straight to the airport,
Speaker 1: straight to the airport, What year, at what date was
Speaker 1: it that you came back to Australia.
Speaker 2: So I was released on February first of two thousand
Speaker 2: and fifteen, and you're back in Australia I think it was.
Speaker 2: It was about three days later, it was about the
Speaker 2: fourth I think.
Speaker 1: And explained to me, you're deported, but you were meant
Speaker 1: to continue your sentence over here in Australia. But there
Speaker 1: was a brief of effidence to start with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I mean, that's that would have been confusing,
Speaker 2: but it was. It was part of the fiction of
Speaker 2: the way that my release had been negotiated. The President
Speaker 2: CC had passed a decree giving himself the power to
Speaker 2: deport any foreign national who was in that prison system
Speaker 2: to complete the judicial process in their country of origin.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the basis of which that's.
Speaker 2: The basis on which he kicked me out. Now, of
Speaker 2: course that in terms of international law, that's meaningless extradition treaties.
Speaker 2: You can only move a prisoner from one country to
Speaker 2: another with an extradition treaty, and those are really complicated
Speaker 2: legal agreements, international agreements. They take years and years to negotiate.
Speaker 2: But in this case, my lawyers apparently drafted a document
Speaker 2: that basically said that I was being released to complete
Speaker 2: the judicial process as far as the Egyptians were concerned.
Speaker 2: It was to complete the trial and then sentence, presumably
Speaker 2: in Australia, as far as the Australians were concerned. And
Speaker 2: you'd understand this, there was no brief of evidence, There
Speaker 2: was no file that as far as the Federal police
Speaker 2: were concerned, I was. There was no evidence that I was.
Speaker 1: Enty you in the court system here.
Speaker 2: Nothing not even no no, even no reason to pull
Speaker 2: me in for an interview, and so there was no
Speaker 2: judicial process to complete.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're a free man, but also still a
Speaker 1: convicted men. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because after the retrial, the retrial was announced a
Speaker 2: couple of days after I was released, the cold accused,
Speaker 2: you have the co accused in Egypt, and when the
Speaker 2: trial began, I was named still as a defendant in Absandia.
Speaker 2: At the end of that retrial, we were all reconvicted,
Speaker 2: given fresh sentences. We maintained I maintained the campaign to
Speaker 2: release my colleagues and they were eventually pardoned and released
Speaker 2: about three weeks after they got that conviction. But the
Speaker 2: pardon didn't extend to me. So I'm still technically convin
Speaker 2: to terrorists.
Speaker 1: How said the impact on your travels, It's made it tough.
Speaker 1: You'd have to tiptoe treaties with Egypt.
Speaker 2: Any country that has an extradition treating and there's one
Speaker 2: treaty that covers the whole of the African Union from
Speaker 2: Cairo to Cape Town, which made it almost impossible, not
Speaker 2: almost made it impossible to do my whole job.
Speaker 1: As a common sense would say, it wouldn't be invoked,
Speaker 1: but you would not dare play with it would.
Speaker 2: And even if it wouldn't be invoked, I knew that
Speaker 2: I'd be in a position of thinking, well, do I
Speaker 2: do the story about the missing millions from the President's
Speaker 2: office or do I do a story about the elephant translocation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'd like to think I'd have the
Speaker 2: balls to do the story about the corruption, but that
Speaker 2: extradition to Egypt would always be hanging over my head
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure that I'd do it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was always going to compromise my work.
Speaker 1: And but for yourself, like as a foreign correspondent that, yeah, journalists.
Speaker 2: That I need. I have to have that ability to
Speaker 2: travel freely, and terrorism conviction just messes with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine how difficult would we try to
Speaker 1: explain that one way I can explain recording a conversation
Speaker 1: on the telephone when your cower cubes were released? How
Speaker 1: are you informed? And how you this is fun?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of You've done your research. You know
Speaker 2: the story. So I've been invited on and this is
Speaker 2: going to sound like a really weird kind of way
Speaker 2: into the story, but I promise you it's true. I've
Speaker 2: been invited onto the Chass media circus as a as
Speaker 2: a as a kind of guest, as a guest to
Speaker 2: that thing, and it was a it was a great show.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it. At the end of the show,
Speaker 2: we're all gathered around, they had this sort of pun session,
Speaker 2: and it was the show ended, the applause died down,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, one of the producers walks
Speaker 2: up with are still on camera the studio and still there,
Speaker 2: and he hands me that a phone and I look
Speaker 2: at the phone and it's a tweet, a single tweet
Speaker 2: that says that Muhammed Fami has been released, has been
Speaker 2: pardoned and released. And I'm standing there in front of
Speaker 2: this wondering is this some kind of joke I've got
Speaker 2: the audience there, I've got all of the other all
Speaker 2: of the other people that were on the show standing
Speaker 2: around me looking at this thing. I'm speechless because it's
Speaker 2: you know, as a journalist, you don't go with just
Speaker 2: one source, and certainly not some random tweet. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was true. I didn't know any of
Speaker 2: this stuff, and all of a sudden, one of the
Speaker 2: other guys sort of filled the void as I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think what do I do? What do I say?
Speaker 2: And reads out the tweet and I simply have to say, well,
Speaker 2: if this is true, and god, I hope it's true,
Speaker 2: then this is this is what we've been fighting for
Speaker 2: all of this time, and the whole, the whole audience
Speaker 2: just erupts in cheers.
Speaker 1: That I'm sure that that put the final or not
Speaker 1: the final piece, because you're going to carry it for forever.
Speaker 1: But that must have made you feel like you've really
Speaker 1: got your freedom when your cacus were out, I would
Speaker 1: imagine it would have been hard everything joy that you're
Speaker 1: taking in life, thinking if they're still.
Speaker 2: In that yeah, yeah, And that was that was the
Speaker 2: moment that I realized, and it eventually it became clear
Speaker 2: that it wasn't just fa me, it was both both
Speaker 2: of them had been had been released. It was an
Speaker 2: extraordinary moment.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised by the interest when you got back
Speaker 1: to Australia because I think you was Cypress You went
Speaker 1: to for a couple of days to decompress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to Cyprus. That was part of the
Speaker 2: advice from from some people who knew and understood how
Speaker 2: these things go and advise, just to just to collect
Speaker 2: my thoughts, just to speak to our Jazira, just to
Speaker 2: kind of have a moment on my own. And so
Speaker 2: I figured it was about a couple of days, three
Speaker 2: days by the time between the moment I've been released
Speaker 2: the moment I got back to Australia and I figured, well,
Speaker 2: it's old news. They've reported that I'm out. I was
Speaker 2: due to fly back. I was arriving back in Brisbane
Speaker 2: on a Wednesday morning, I think at two am. I thought,
Speaker 2: nobody's going to show up at the airport, and then
Speaker 2: maybe a couple of insomniac photographers who might show up
Speaker 2: just to try and get a photograph, but that a bit.
Speaker 2: Maybe some of the morning TV news programs might send
Speaker 2: a crew, but nobody else, and it was just mind blowing.
Speaker 2: It was insane. There were hundreds of well wishes, of
Speaker 2: camera crews, of photographers, of journalists. It was just nuts,
Speaker 2: this huge, huge welcoming party.
Speaker 1: And what did you do when you came out of
Speaker 1: the gates.
Speaker 2: I just remember but punching the air and I saw
Speaker 2: some friends in the crowd who hadn't seen for years
Speaker 2: and years and years. I went and embraced And you know,
Speaker 2: I said then that because at that point my colleagues
Speaker 2: were still in prison. And the one thing I said
Speaker 2: was that if if it's right for me to be free,
Speaker 2: then it's also right for my colleagues to.
Speaker 1: Be amazing, amazing story lessons lessons learnt from it from
Speaker 1: yourself before we go going to that media being locked up,
Speaker 1: and I saw you had figures at the end of
Speaker 1: the film, the correspondent figures about foreign correspondence journalists locked up.
Speaker 1: And I think that it was in excess of four
Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven countries or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well forty It was record numbers in prisons in countries
Speaker 2: all over the world. That the numbers of journalists have
Speaker 2: been murdered for their work is at record highs. The
Speaker 2: numbers of journalists behind bar are also at record highs,
Speaker 2: and this has since the CpG, the Committee to Protect
Speaker 2: Journalists to be tracking the numbers, and they started in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, I think it was, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the highest that it's ever been. And curiously, the
Speaker 2: CPJ calculates or assesses the charges that the journalists are facing,
Speaker 2: and they reckon that around three quarters of them, two
Speaker 2: thirds to three quarters are there on what they loosely
Speaker 2: describe as as anti state charges. So that's things like
Speaker 2: sedition trees and terrorism threats to national security, which circles
Speaker 2: back to what I was saying to you earlier in
Speaker 2: the first part of the podcast, where we were talking
Speaker 2: about the ways in which governments have used national security
Speaker 2: to come after uncomfortable journalism.
Speaker 1: And that's a big umbrella to pull over is security
Speaker 1: that could cover so many different.
Speaker 2: Things, so many, so many things, and see secrecy provisions exactly.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying, and again you'd understand this well too,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that it's there aren't times that journalists
Speaker 2: violate national security and really place national security at risk.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that journals should have the right to
Speaker 2: publish whatever they want. But governments have been using security
Speaker 2: legislation to silence uncomfortable journalism, to accuse journalists of being
Speaker 2: involved in acts of terrorism or treason or espionage, and
Speaker 2: using that national security rhetoric as a way of shutting
Speaker 2: down journalism. And I think that is a really dangerous
Speaker 2: trend that we've really seen takeoffs since nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: And how we can how can we prevent that law?
Speaker 1: What can be done?
Speaker 2: Well, A part of it is being aware of it
Speaker 2: and pushing governments to push back. In Australia we have
Speaker 2: we've got those problems as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk through that because again the war on terror
Speaker 1: and metadata that people can get access to, and my
Speaker 1: take on it is that they can attack the journalist's
Speaker 1: source with the metadata, find out who if you broke
Speaker 1: a story and I'm in the police or security and
Speaker 1: we want to find out who you've been speaking to,
Speaker 1: where the leak came from, the metadata would track it
Speaker 1: back for us.
Speaker 2: And maybe I should explain what metadata is metadata. George Brandish,
Speaker 2: when he was introducing the Data Attention legislation, famously just
Speaker 2: and rather cavalierly described it as the outside of the envelope.
Speaker 2: In other words, it's not the contents of communication, but
Speaker 2: it's all of the details around it. It's who you
Speaker 2: emailed or texted or called when you sent those emails,
Speaker 2: where you were at the time, all of that kind
Speaker 2: of data. The websites that you're browsing history, and even
Speaker 2: though they don't know, the authorities don't know, can't investigate
Speaker 2: the contents. It's very easy to cross reference. As you said,
Speaker 2: if there is a leak from the government, you don't
Speaker 2: have to dig too far to find who has been
Speaker 2: the Jones break down.
Speaker 1: If you're reporting on a police story and I'm still
Speaker 1: in the police and they want to know where the
Speaker 1: sources and they look at your phone records and you've
Speaker 1: been on the phone to me or texting me, so yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Or if you if you make a phone
Speaker 2: call to a medical clinic, to a doctor, you have
Speaker 2: a Google search for sexually transmitted diseases, and then you've
Speaker 2: got a visit to a chemist. It's pretty clear what's
Speaker 2: going on. You know, you don't have to be.
Speaker 1: You don't have to bring that example up.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's very easy to cross reference those bits
Speaker 2: ab and so again we're saying not that the journalist
Speaker 2: relationship to sources is really crucial to allowing journalists to
Speaker 2: do their jobs in holding governments and officials to account.
Speaker 2: I think best known example, and perhaps the most egregious
Speaker 2: example in Australia is the case of David McBride. The
Speaker 2: Australian Federal Police raided the officers of the ABC looking
Speaker 2: for evidence of the sources to the story that became
Speaker 2: known as the Afghan Files. This was evidence that the
Speaker 2: ABC published of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: murders of civilians. If the ABC is publishing allegations of
Speaker 2: that our soldiers have committed war crimes are murdered civilians
Speaker 2: in our name, that is crucially in the public interest. Right.
Speaker 2: What we saw was the Federal Police going after the
Speaker 2: source of that of that story. Now, I think there's
Speaker 2: something fundamentally messed up in that world where yes, the
Speaker 2: ABC did rely on classified information and that's a crime
Speaker 2: revealing classified information, but there is equally there is a
Speaker 2: public and so there's a public interest in prosecuting that leak.
Speaker 2: But there is equally a public interest in the story
Speaker 2: that the ABC published. And the ABC was never going
Speaker 2: to be able to get that story without without that
Speaker 2: that classified information. And so I'd say, you've got to
Speaker 2: create a mechanism to weigh up these competing public interests.
Speaker 2: And sometimes the public interest in publishing information is going
Speaker 2: to outweigh the public interest in prosecuting Aleika.
Speaker 1: And quite often on that aspect of publishing, we're talking
Speaker 1: public servants to say it to serve the public. I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in that. I can only talk on
Speaker 1: my area that I understand in policing, like some of
Speaker 1: the things that were shut down because I didn't see
Speaker 1: this as public interest. It was going to be critical
Speaker 1: of the police and shut down. And the three pillars
Speaker 1: of journalism about the truth, accountability, and objectivity is that
Speaker 1: the I saw in policing Crewer. So I'm talking at
Speaker 1: this level, not national security, in policing, and I've seen
Speaker 1: it now working in journalism. There's some journalists that carry
Speaker 1: favor of the police and get stories given to them
Speaker 1: because they don't criticize the police. And I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, transparency is important.
Speaker 2: And you'd understand as a cop too, it's really hard
Speaker 2: when you've got journalists set on your back but it's
Speaker 2: also really important in keeping the system honest.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we're seeing with podcasts and different things,
Speaker 1: a reference like Teacher's Pet, where the police weren't going
Speaker 1: to talk about talk about that case, but when the
Speaker 1: public started talking about Headley Thomas started broadcasting about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: people start to become accountable and things get done. I
Speaker 1: do see the importance of it. And you're talking at
Speaker 1: such as scale countries go the war because of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Reference back to what you were saying in earlier on
Speaker 1: you had a sense of responsibility in Afghanistan because there's
Speaker 1: only a few of you reporting what was happening.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and this is why I believe in the
Speaker 2: work that the journalists do and why I believe that
Speaker 2: it should be protected. Now, I recognize and you mentioned
Speaker 2: journalists that curry favor with the cops to keep those
Speaker 2: lines of communication open. I recognize that not all journalists
Speaker 2: work with integrity. I completely understand that, and the industry
Speaker 2: has a lot of work to do to recover public trust.
Speaker 2: But fundamentally we need it to keep our system on us,
Speaker 2: to keep the system of accountability going, to keep vigorous,
Speaker 2: well informed public debates happening. Imagine a world where we
Speaker 2: don't have good journalism, where we depend on our understanding
Speaker 2: of the government, of what takes place in government, on
Speaker 2: the tweets and social media posts of our politicians and
Speaker 2: public servants. That that that's not a world in which
Speaker 2: I feel I had a great deal of confidence you know,
Speaker 2: I'm with you, and so fundamentally we need to protect it.
Speaker 2: Australia doesn't have any constitutional protection for press freedom.
Speaker 1: I picked that up in preparing for this that Australia
Speaker 1: is almost unique in that situation that we don't have that.
Speaker 1: What are you suggesting that would be something?
Speaker 2: I'm suggesting a Media Freedom Act. We're not going to
Speaker 2: get constitutional reform. We're not going to get press freedom
Speaker 2: written into the constitution. It's very so difficult in Australia.
Speaker 2: But an Act of Parliament can do that job. Doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be massively complicated. The Human Rights Acts in Queensland,
Speaker 2: the Act and Victoria say three very simple things. They
Speaker 2: say Parliament has to always consider human rights when they're
Speaker 2: passing new legislation. In other words, they've got to always
Speaker 2: factor it in as much as possible. Protected that the
Speaker 2: courts have to interpret existing legislation in ways that are
Speaker 2: consistent with human rights. Even if there's no explicit thing
Speaker 2: that says that the cops can't beat up a ten
Speaker 2: year old, you still can't beat up a ten year
Speaker 2: old to break it all then, and thirdly, the public
Speaker 2: servants have to act in ways that support human rights. Now,
Speaker 2: I think if you simply replace the words human rights
Speaker 2: with media freedom, then you're in the ball park of
Speaker 2: where we need to be. That you have to the
Speaker 2: Parliament and the courts have an obligation to consider the
Speaker 2: importance of media freedom when they're dealing with that, when
Speaker 2: they're either creating legislation or interpreting and implying it. That's
Speaker 2: the key. Doesn't always have to privilege everything else. But
Speaker 2: you've got to have an opportunity to recognize that public
Speaker 2: interest in the work that journalists do and weigh that
Speaker 2: against the more established public interest in prosecutions.
Speaker 1: And now I'm with you one hundred percent on that.
Speaker 1: And I always said when the doors are closed to
Speaker 1: the court and the media are excluded, there's usually no
Speaker 1: good that's going on in there. Times need to be
Speaker 1: have the media excuse and matters can't be reported on
Speaker 1: a non publication, but invariably public would be outraged and
Speaker 1: shocked if they knew what was going on when those
Speaker 1: doors are closed. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to
Speaker 1: be done. Well, I'm glad you've had your rest for
Speaker 1: four hundred days in your prison, sitting there meditating and
Speaker 1: playing bang gabon and everything else that you're doing. What
Speaker 1: are you doing with yourself now?
Speaker 2: So I'm an academic and the media freedom a I'm
Speaker 2: a professor of journalism at mcquarie University, and I also
Speaker 2: run a not for profit organization, an advocacy group called
Speaker 2: the Alliance for Journalists Freedom. And in fact, that idea
Speaker 2: of a Media Freedom Act is something that's right at
Speaker 2: the very top of our agenda.
Speaker 1: Where would people find find that.
Speaker 2: Our website Journalists Journalists Freedom don't come. They've We've dripped,
Speaker 2: We've drafted the act. We're also setting up a professional
Speaker 2: association for journalism. We think that if we're going to
Speaker 2: give journalists rights in law, then we also they also
Speaker 2: need to take on responsibilities through a more rigorous system
Speaker 2: for self regulation. And we think that helps everybody. It
Speaker 2: makes journalism more trustworthy. It means people have more confidence
Speaker 2: in journalism. They can identify good journalism, journalism that's produced
Speaker 2: in line with a code of conduct, a set of
Speaker 2: ethics and standards. But we also think it's important to
Speaker 2: have that enshrined in law to make sure that the
Speaker 2: kind of erosion that we're seeing taking place is stopped.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure your students are getting a lot of
Speaker 1: inspiration from having you speak to them. Are you enjoying
Speaker 1: training future?
Speaker 2: J I miss I miss my old life terribly, right,
Speaker 2: I miss being a foreign correspondent. That identity was really
Speaker 2: deeply embedded in my own DNA. But this is a
Speaker 2: pretty good plan.
Speaker 1: Be Yeah, I'm happy for you that you've found that
Speaker 1: you've said that you've missed your former occupation as a
Speaker 1: foreign correspondent. Do you have regrets that you ever took
Speaker 1: up that offer for the three weeks?
Speaker 2: No time, No, no regrets at all. I mean I could.
Speaker 2: To have to have a regret implies that I might
Speaker 2: have made a different decision under the same circumstances. And
Speaker 2: I would never have done that, you know I would.
Speaker 2: I would never have gone. I wouldn't wish prison on
Speaker 2: my worst enemy. But at the same time, to say
Speaker 2: I have regrets would suggest I did something wrong. And
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: And so no, okay, I'm not going to let you
Speaker 1: go until we talk about your your movie and Richard
Speaker 1: Roxburgh playing playing you? Was he your first choice?
Speaker 2: And how do you two get I don't tell Rocks,
Speaker 2: but my first choice was was Chris Hamsworth. But okay,
Speaker 2: hysterical laughter wasn't the response.
Speaker 1: I can see where you're coming.
Speaker 2: You can't see you can't see it, Hamsworth sitting here.
Speaker 1: The likeness is when you got out of prison, but
Speaker 1: clearly workouts that you were doing.
Speaker 2: But no, I didn't look as I think you might
Speaker 2: have mentioned earlier. I couldn't. I couldn't really get Cleaver Green,
Speaker 2: the character from Rake, out of my head when I
Speaker 2: knew that Richard Richard was being considered for the role.
Speaker 2: But he is an extraordinary character actor. He's one of
Speaker 2: Australia's finest. And the more I got to know him
Speaker 2: and see his performance, the more I realized that, actually
Speaker 2: I think he had it nailed. As he said, he
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to do his version of Peter Grestor, he
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to impersonate me. And when he said that,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking that feeling a huge weight off my
Speaker 2: shoulders because it meant I didn't have to see some
Speaker 2: weird quirk of myself was being portrayed accurately on screen,
Speaker 2: but it was more of a feel alike rather than
Speaker 2: a look alike. And I think he got that feeling
Speaker 2: really nailed.
Speaker 1: Ye, well, it would have been an interesting, interesting experience
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: It was. It was fascinating, but it was also again,
Speaker 2: just to quote kriv Standards the director who said, look
Speaker 2: that they weren't trying to I struggled a lot with
Speaker 2: the idea of seeing myself on screen on the big
Speaker 2: screen until I realized that it's not me up there.
Speaker 2: It's this guy that has my name that's going through
Speaker 2: that story. But it's an artistic interpretation of my story,
Speaker 2: and it's been through countless hand layers of artistry. The scriptwriter,
Speaker 2: the director, the actors, the crew, the set designers, the editors.
Speaker 2: All of those guys have had their own artistic interpretation.
Speaker 2: So what you see on screen is is that there's
Speaker 2: a result of nomination of that work. As Crip said,
Speaker 2: it's not a photograph, it's a painting, and so I
Speaker 2: think it's a pretty it's a pretty damn good painting.
Speaker 1: Okay, But it's another good way of getting the message out,
Speaker 1: another medium forgetting getting If.
Speaker 2: It makes people think and talk about the first and
Speaker 2: foremost I think I hope you agree it's a damn
Speaker 2: good drama very much, but I think it also has
Speaker 2: that it provokes conversations around the importance of media freedom
Speaker 2: and what's been happening to journalists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it's time to time to wrap up.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed this chat obviously, and just keep up the
Speaker 1: good work. I think it's amazing the career that you've had.
Speaker 1: I'm a bit jealous, like if someone said to me,
Speaker 1: what would I would like to be in all honesty,
Speaker 1: and I think I was obsessed with George Nigas when
Speaker 1: he was a foreign correspondent. I wanted to be on
Speaker 1: a jeep with a scarf round and traveling through a
Speaker 1: war zone a foreign correspondent. But what a fascinating career
Speaker 1: you've had and experiences you had in the way that
Speaker 1: you've come out of it. Also, full credit to you,
Speaker 1: and I've enjoyed having you on I Catch Killers and
Speaker 1: that exclusive group that you've got. Now not only you
Speaker 1: all working at Macquarie University, you've been locked up overseas.
Speaker 1: You've also also appeared on My Catch Killers, and.
Speaker 2: This is probably the defining moment for all of us.
Speaker 2: Then the herd could die him in