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CAIRO: There was no announcement from the court. No judge's associate fronted the assembled defendants, lawyers and embassy representatives to inform them the verdict in the retrial of three Al-Jazeera journalists, including Australian Peter Greste, had been delayed.
This second trial continued as the first one began, without rhyme or reason, due process or procedure, adhering to a legal standard apparently unique to the much-maligned Egyptian judiciary.
Outside the dusty, sprawling Tora Prison complex in Egypt's capital Cairo it was all rumour, confusion and anxiety.
First it was Al-Jazeera producer Baher Mohamed who emerged from inside the complex to say that although the judge's team had told him the hearing would go ahead on Thursday, security officers had told him unofficially it would not.
"I really don't know what to do," Mr Mohamed told the assembled media. "It seems it is not going ahead but what if we leave and they suddenly decide to go ahead … we could be sentenced in absentia."
His colleague and co-defendant Mohamed Fahmy arrived soon after and he too had no official word from the court, while back in Australia, to where Mr Greste was deported back in February, the disappointment was palpable.
"This is an incredibly frustrating development," Mr Greste said. "The lives of all three of us and our families are on hold until we know the verdict. We don't know why the court has made its decision but I am clearly disappointed that the verdict has been adjourned again."
It is the ninth adjournment in this retrial, crushing the hopes of Mr Greste, Mr Mohamed and Mr Fahmy that their 18-month long legal and prison ordeal may soon come to an end.
"I know that I am innocent, my team is innocent and that me, Baher and Peter and everyone in the office has produced flawless reporting," Mr Fahmy told Fairfax Media.
"This experience changed me and my family forever, we will never be the same, it has really impacted our well being, our life, our reputation."
Pawns in a bitter geopolitical fallout between Egypt and Qatar, the oil-rich gulf state that founded Al-Jazeera, the three journalists have endured more than 400 days in prison, a trial roundly criticised as a legal and human rights travesty, a guilty verdict, harsh sentences, an appeal and a second trial.
The three were arrested on December 29 in a night-time raid that was filmed, set to melodramatic music and shown on Egypt's state-run television stations.
Charges of conspiring with a terrorist group (the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed by Egypt's newly-reinstalled military government just days before their arrest), producing false news that harmed Egypt's international interests soon followed.
After what was widely condemned as a sham trial, in which the video evidence presented to the court by the prosecution consisted of unrelated footage such as Mr Greste's award-winning BBC documentary on Somalia, photographs of a family holiday in Europe and a Sky News report on tourism in Egypt the three were found guilty on all charges.
Mr Greste and Mr Fahmy were sentenced to seven years, Mr Mohamed to 10 years.
They had protested their innocence from the beginning and all appealed their convictions and sentences.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi released Mr Greste under a decree issued in November authorising the president to approve the deportation of foreign prisoners.
Three more journalists, two Britons and a Dutch citizen, were sentenced in absentia to 10 years for the same alleged crimes.
The Jazeera journalists "have been persecuted enough in Egypt just for doing their jobs as journalists," says Sherif Mansour, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.
"Despite widespread criticism of the Al-Jazeera case, Egyptian authorities continue to try to suppress the flow of information by pressuring, harassing, and jailing journalists working for a range of news outlets."
There was no official announcement of a new hearing date although Egyptian media were reporting two possibilities: August 2 or August 8.
