Jailed Al Jazeera journalists' nightmare ending?

LONDON -- Three Al Jazeera journalists jailed in Egypt for the past year are looking forward to a court hearing on Thursday. The men were convicted of supporting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and of spreading false news, but from the start, the case has been more about politics than crime.

Now, however, CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer reports the political winds in Egypt are shifting, and there's hope that the next court date could see the trio set free.

Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste, producer Baher Mohamed and Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy - and the men's families, have been living a nightmare.

"We just hope so much that everything sorts itself out on the 1st of January," Lois Greste, the correspondent's mother, said recently. She and her husband are hoping an appeal judge will rule on New Year's day that their son is free to leave Egypt and fly home.

To keep the pressure up, Al Jazeera staff held a vigil at the network's headquarters in Doha, Qatar this week, while in London, friends and colleagues demonstrated outside the Egyptian Embassy.

Supporters have tweeted their solidarity for months with the hashtag #FreeAJStaff.

The three men were arrested last December in their hotel room in Cairo - where they'd been covering the story of Egypt's military seizing power from the elected president, Mohammed Morsi. But the government accused them of acting as a mouthpiece for a banned hardline Islamic party, the Muslim Brotherhood, which backed Morsi.

In fact, most diplomats believe the men are guilty of nothing more than working for a TV network funded by the Arab kingdom of Qatar, Egypt's bitter enemy.

"Mohamed is a pawn in a cold war between Egypt and Qatar," said Marwa Omara, Fahmy's fiancé. "He didn't do anything, he didn't commit any crime." In June, the men were convicted in a trial that was farcical and chaotic.

President Obama has joined the chorus of international calls for their freedom, saying his administration has "been clear both publicly and privately, they should be released."

Palmer says there is now some reason for optimism; relations between Egypt and Qatar have recently thawed, and Al Jazeera has made a concession and shut down its Egyptian affiliate.

"I'd like to think that it's removed the political aspect of the reason why Peter was arrested," said Michael Greste, the Al Jazeera newsman's brother, "which is another reason why we'd like to be a bit hopeful that we might have a just outcome on the first (of January)."

As Palmer notes, however, Egyptian courts are notoriously unpredictable -- sometimes verdicts are delivered in a matter of minutes while in other cases, the parties involved are left waiting days to learn the outcome.