Egyptian prosecutors have accused three detained Al-Jazeera journalists, including an Australian and a Canadian, of broadcasting false news in the service of the now terror-blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
The three journalists were arrested on December 29 in a Cairo hotel.
They include Peter Greste, an acclaimed Australian reporter who formerly worked for the BBC, and Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Adel Fahmy.
"The accused confessed during interrogation that they belonged to the terrorist group" the Muslim Brotherhood, prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.
They charged that the journalists, who were not officially accredited, edited footage "to tarnish Egypt's image abroad... to serve the interests of the international terrorist organisation".
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The journalists' lawyers and Al-Jazeera have dismissed the allegations as false.
"The accusations against our journalists do not stand up to scrutiny," the broadcaster's spokesman Osama Saeed said in a statement.
Fahmy, a well-known journalist in Cairo who previously worked with CNN, has no known ties with the Brotherhood.
Two other Al-Jazeera reporters remain in custody, including Abdullah Elshamy, arrested on August 14 when police dispersed a sit-in against the army's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, killing hundreds.
Egyptian authorities have been incensed by Al-Jazeera's coverage of their crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since the overthrow of the country's first freely elected president last July.
The government declared the Brotherhood a "terrorist organisation" in December, after accusing it of a suicide bombing at a police headquarters north of Cairo that killed 15 people.
The blacklisting outlaws promotion of the Brotherhood verbally or in writing and can lead to lengthy prison sentences.
