Cairo, Aug 30 (EFE).– The Egyptian Foreign Ministry on the weekend issued a communique in which it rejected criticism by foreign entities of the three-year prison sentences imposed on three Al Jazeera journalists by the Cairo Criminal Court.

The government called the criticism “unacceptable interference” and accused the critics of trying to “deliberately confuse” the freedom of the press set forth in the Egyptian Constitution with a specific violation of the law.

The Foreign Ministry statement said that the Egyptian Constitution protects all sorts of rights and freedoms.

It said that the ongoing criticism of the verdict by various foreign entities claiming that the government restricts freedom of the press does not conform to reality.

In addition, it said that the three journalists “committed specific and documented violations, on which the court based” its verdict and sentences, adding that “thousands of Egyptian and foreign journalists” work perfectly freely in Egypt.

Moreover, on Sunday the Foreign Ministry, in another communique, said that it had summoned Britain’s ambassador to Cairo, John Casson, to explain his criticism over the sentences.

Casson, the ministry said, remarked that the sentences passed at the journalists’ trial, which he attended, would reduce confidence in the steps Egypt is taking to establish political stability.

On Saturday, the Cairo court sentenced Mohammed Fahmy, a naturalized Canadian who has given up his Egyptian citizenship, Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, and Peter Greste, an Australian who was deported in February, to three-year prison terms.

All three have denied the charges against them, calling them absurd, and their legal teams have said they will appeal.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a communique that Washington had urged Egyptian authorities to take “all available measures” to amend the sentences.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, says that dozens of journalists have been arrested in Egypt over the past two years and 20 of them are still in jail as part of a plan to repress “independent media” and to “silence dissidence.”

Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, was one of the media outlets that gave the most coverage to the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters after the military coup that toppled Islamist President Mohammed Mursi. EFE