Freeing Peter

Freeing Peter tells the extraordinary true story of how an ordinary Australian family took on the Egyptian government and freed Peter Greste from unjust imprisonment.

What is it about some people that allows them to come through the hardest of trials while others go under? That's the question addressed in Freeing Peter, jointly written by the family of Peter Greste. Five voices alternate in this incredible story: Peter's Latvian-born parents, both retired; his two brothers, one a farmer, the other a policeman; and Peter himself.
Peter was working in Egypt as a journalist for Al Jazeera in December 2013 when he was arrested and imprisoned along with two colleagues. The three of them were accused of reporting material that threatened national security. The charges were completely unsubstantiated and there was no supporting evidence, but after a sham trial Peter was given a seven-year sentence. He was freed after thirteen months, in February 2015, with no explanation given for his release, and once out he was promptly deported.
Immediately following Peter's arrest, his parents and brothers went to work on the campaign that secured his freedom. So well did they run this that his plight was seldom out of the media for the duration of his incarceration, but the process was by no means plain sailing, nor was there always agreement. The Grestes' ability to put aside their personal differences, and to be galvanized rather than paralyzed by his unfair treatment, played a huge part in their success, and here they write frankly about those strains on their relationships, and the highs and lows of the 400-day ordeal. They also give emotional accounts of visiting Peter in prison, struggling with the Egyptian legal system and language and culture, and take us into the work done behind the scenes on diplomatic and political levels. Peter himself writes superbly about the effect of prison on his mental state and thinking. His battle to stop himself constructing an existential prison within the physical one goes right to the core of the human condition.
At a time when we hear so much empty rhetoric about family values, here's a story that shows what family really means. And not just birth family. While Peter was in prison on the opposite side of the world, his fellow inmates became his family, feeding him, translating for him, comforting him, keeping his spirits up. It was an experience that left him as humbled as he was grateful, and one which saw his own family forge bonds with those others as strong as any kin.