Beirut: Peter Greste is in fine company as he sits trapped in his jail cell in Egypt, marking the anniversary no one wants to celebrate.
All around him, in the sprawling Tora Prison complex in which he and his two al-Jazeera colleagues are held, to al-Qanater women's prison further north and in other jails across the country, remarkable human rights lawyers, activists, students and journalists bide their time in crowded cells.
Some, like Greste, 49, his bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy, 40, and producer Baher Mohamed, 31, have already been sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison.
The charges, dismissed by legal experts and human rights groups as politically motivated and lacking evidence to support them, include broadcasting false news and aiding a "terrorist organisation" (the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood).
December 29 makes it one year in prison for the men. January 1 will be the first day of their appeal.
Other inmates, such as the highly respected human rights lawyer Yara Sallam and the 22 activists tried and convicted with her, are awaiting an appeal against their three-year sentences.
The 29-year-old Ms Sallam is just one of the thousands swept up under Egypt's new "anti-protest law" designed to quell any dissent against the increasingly hardline government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Then there's the photographer Mahmoud "Shawkan" Abou Zeid, who has been held for more than 500 days without charge after he was arrested with two other journalists covering the violent dispersal of the protest camp outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, in which human rights groups say at least 1000 people died.
The two other journalists were released, but his original 45-day detention is simply renewed every 45 days, seemingly indefinitely.
"The world has declared a war against terror, but there is little condemnation of the human rights abuses, arbitrary detentions, violent deaths, mass trials and sentencing, all of which have been sanctioned by the Egyptian authorities," Abou Zeid wrote from his cell last week.
Human rights monitors say the prison population has grown by at least 16,000 since the military ousted the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government in July 2013.
Along with three mass death sentences handed down to hundreds of defendants at a time, this past year in Egypt's courts has been marked by what observers describe as politically driven trials aimed at crippling the Brotherhood and its supporters, including Qatar, the owners of al-Jazeera.
December 29 is a terrible anniversary for the Jazeera journalists, 365 days since Egyptian security officials raided the upscale Marriott Hotel from which they were operating and where Greste was staying and dragged the men away.
A year away from loved ones, enforced time out from their careers, a sudden push into the unfamiliar world of campaigning and media appearances for their families.
A year in which Greste's family crossed the globe month in, month out, visiting him in prison, quietly working behind the scenes, delivering speeches at media-freedom events from Kenya to Britain to Australia.
A year in which Fahmy's brother, parents and fiancee also campaigned hard, in Egypt and Canada, and a year in which Mohamed's wife gave birth to their third child without him.
Much of it was spent in pretrial detention, the three men locked in a tiny cell with only one hour outside, six days a week, until the devastating verdict: seven years for Greste and Fahmy, 10 years for Mohamed.
Two days after this grim anniversary, on January 1, the Egyptian Court of Cassation is scheduled to begin hearing their appeal. Through it all, against enormous odds, the Jazeera journalists have worked tirelessly to raise their voices for media freedom in Egypt and around the world. In letters dictated to their families, who in turn memorised them and committed them to paper, they have written of their plight and what it means for journalism and democracy.
"We – and by that I mean all involved in this fight for justice, including us three, our families, and you, our supporters – have created a huge global awareness of not just our cause, but the far wider and more vital issues of press freedom, the persecution of journalists, and of justice in Egypt," Greste wrote from prison in a letter released just before Christmas. "But, even more than that, we have reignited public discussion and awareness of the vital role that unfettered journalism plays in any healthy, functioning democracy. Never has cleared-eyed, critical, sceptical journalism been more necessary to help make sense of a world overloaded with information."
Greste, one of at least 12 journalists imprisoned in Egypt, is not dwelling on the anniversary of his detention or his impending appeal, say his parents Lois, 76 and Juris, 78. Instead, he is focused on handing in his second assignment in his MA in International Relations on time, maintaining, as his parents described after their short Christmas Day visit with their son in prison, his "mental balance".
"It is impossible for him to think about what might happen after the appeal, he does not want to go there as it just raises his hopes," Lois says. "Ultimately, it is Peter's hope that if he is released, his colleagues are released along with him . . . all along his emphasis has been on freedom of the press and on the others jailed with him."
His parents, like Greste, do not want to get their hopes up. "We cannot believe that the early weeks of January will produce any other result than a complete dismissal of the original charges, but at the same time we are ready for the unexpected," Juris says.
"We keep hearing conflicting rumours about the process for the appeal or for the days after . . . we are still waiting to know for sure whether we will be admitted to the court, or in fact whether the media will be admitted."
There have been some indications that Egypt's loud diplomatic war with Qatar might finally be subsiding, allowing the chance of an early release for the Jazeera journalists to rise.
The fate of Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed is inextricably linked to relations between Egypt and the tiny, oil-rich monarchy which owns and founded al-Jazeera and which has championed the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood.
After a disastrous year in power as Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Mursi was overthrown by the military, the Brotherhood's leadership jailed and the group itself designated a terrorist organisation.
The fallout from the Qatar-Egypt split was extensive, pitting the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain against Qatar until a regional summit in November drew Qatar back into the fold.
In December, a special envoy from Qatar visited Egypt, accompanied by a representative of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, in another sign that tensions may be receding. Al-Jazeera announced that its much-criticised Egyptian channel Mubasher Misr ("Egypt Live") would close, in what many commentators read as a further sign of thawing relations.
And when Mr Sisi announced in an interview in November that he might consider a pardon for foreigners held in Egyptian jails, as well as a new law allowing for the extradition of foreigners who have committed crimes in Egypt, many hoped for the best. "It's possible the government is considering releasing the foreign journalists," says Mohamed Lotfy, the executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. "One has to consider the context in which the case started – that context is changing and it might have an impact on the case."
This could assist Greste and possibly Fahmy, who holds Egyptian and Canadian citizenship, he says, but their colleague Baher Mohamed, who is Egyptian, would not be covered.
In the meantime, Greste continues to draw energy from the campaign he and his colleagues have driven from behind the bars of Tora Prison. "We have galvanised an incredible coalition of political, diplomatic and media figures, as well as a vast army of social media supporters to fight for that most basic of rights: the right to know," he wrote.
"Everyone, from US President Barack Obama to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has been speaking out both publicly and in private to demand our release and call for a free press in Egypt."
So many are waiting for that call to be heard.
