Freeing Peter

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Freeing Peter tells the extraordinary true story of how an ordinary Australian family took on the Egyptian government to get Peter Greste out of prison.

What would you do if a loved one were to suddenly find themselves in the most impossible of situations? That's the question addressed in Freeing Peter, jointly written by the family of Peter Greste following his arrest in Egypt in 2013 for allegedly threatening national security. The charges, arising from his work as a journalist, were unsubstantiated, but after a sham trial Peter was given a seven-year sentence. Having been jailed at the outset, he spent a total of four hundred days in prison.

Immediately following his arrest, his family went to work on the campaign to free him, with an intensity that meant his plight was seldom out of the headlines. But the process was by no means plain sailing, nor was there always agreement. The Grestes' ability to put aside their personal differences, to be galvanised rather than paralysed by the crisis, played a huge part in their success. Here they write frankly about the daily uncertainty, the strains of decision-making, the emotional visits to Peter in prison, the lack of transparency in the Egyptian legal system, the struggles with language and culture. For his part, Peter superbly depicts the effects of incarceration on his state of mind, and his battle to stop himself constructing a mental prison within the physical one.

Freeing Peter is an inspirational story about fortitude, resilience, and a highly functional family whose unity proved to be the saving of them.