Last week, three Al Jazeera English-language journalists — Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste — were sentenced to up to 3 years and 6 months in prison in Egypt.

Even those these three were clearly journalists working for the Al Jazeera network, which operates out of Doha, Qatar, the Egyptian court declared that they were “not journalists” and that they had “fabricated” the news. The three were charged with broadcasting false reports and colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now outlawed as a terrorist group in Egypt.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Some of you may remember the Arab Spring, where, among other things, the Egyptian people overthrew the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. They then elected Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who tried to move Egypt towards Islamic law and draft a new Constitution that would have taken away many of the freedomse Egyptians were fighting for. Morsi was subsequently overthrown in a military-backed coup, which led to fresh elections, and (surprise!) the election of the military man who had engineered the coup, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

According to the Guardian,

Critics described the initial trial as Kafkaesque. As evidence, prosecutors played footage of a trotting horse from Sky News Arabia and a music video for the song Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye.

I don’t even know what that means. How is that evidence of any kind?

What did these three actually write or say that got them into so much hot water? It’s not clear to me. A search on the Internet today left that element a mystery.

But the message that the Egyptian government tried to send is unmistakable.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.