Amal Clooney, human rights lawyer and wife of George Clooney, has recently been threatened by Egyptian officials with arrest. According to People Magazine, the 36-year-old is currently defending Mohamed Fahmy, one of three Al Jazeera journalists accused of aiding the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. 

Her client, Fahmy, was initially sentenced along with Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed to 7-10 years in prison after being found guilty of crime by controversial judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata. However, all three were recently granted a retrial after a new judge was appointed to the case. 

The Guardian reports that Clooney said the journalists were victims of the same flaws that she earmarked in a February 2014 report about Egyptian courts. In the report, she suggested that certain government officials hold too much power over judges and state prosecutors, and that officers of the court should act more independently.

However, her report was not followed. Clooney stated, "That recommendation wasn't followed, and we've seen the results of that in this particular case where you had a handpicked panel led by a judge who is known for dispensing brutal verdicts... And this one was no different."

Clooney stated of the recent threat, "When I went to launch the report, first of all they stopped us from doing it in Cairo... They said: 'Does the report criticize the army, the judiciary, or the government?' We said: 'Well, yes.' They said: 'Well then, you're risking arrest.'"

Nonetheless, Clooney will carry on. She is worried about the retrial, and has stated, "I don't see how the prosecution can proceed again in a trial process even if the judges were to be constituted properly this time around. I don't see how they could fix the lack of evidence...

We have to continue and double our efforts to achieve his release in other ways. Unfortunately we have to conclude that we can't rely on these Egyptian court processes to achieve a fair or swift result."