Obama told Sisi to “invest in the political, economic, and social aspirations of the Egyptian people” while expressing concern over the “continued imprisonment of journalists” and other ongoing issues such as mass trials, repression of NGOs and peaceful activists in the state’s crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Greste and his Egyptian colleagues Mohamed Baher and Mohamed Fahmy, a dual citizen of Canada and Egypt, have been in detention almost a year now. They were sentenced to multiple-year prison terms by a Cairo court in June in a widely-condemned trial, but are now serving their terms in Tora Prison despite diplomatic efforts to get them freed.
The news came on the day an Al Jazeera report paid tribute to Latvia's efforts to free Greste, describing the country as "the mouse that roared".
