Australian journalist Peter Greste and two colleagues have reacted with anger and dismay after being jailed for seven years in Egypt.

An Egyptian court convicted the three journalists from Al-Jazeera English and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges.

The decision has brought widespread criticism that the verdict was a blow to freedom of expression.

Peter Greste (right) and his colleagues during their trial.

Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohammed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed have been detained since a December raid on their Cairo hotel room, which they were using as an office as they covered protests by supporters of the ousted Islamist president.

The raid was part of a broad crackdown against Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood.

They had pleaded innocent, saying they were simply doing their jobs as journalists.

But they were charged with supporting the Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organisation, and of fabricating footage to undermine Egypt’s national security and make it appear the country was facing civil war.

The prosecution provided little evidence in the case, showing video footage found in their possession – most of which had nothing to do with the case, including a report on a veterinary hospital in Cairo, Christian life and old footage of Greste from previous assignments elsewhere in Africa.

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“I swear they will pay for this,” Fahmy, who was Al-Jazeera English’s acting Cairo bureau chief, shouted angrily from the defendants’ cage after the sentences were announced in the Cairo court Monday.

Greste raised his fists in the air.

“They just ruined a family,” said Fahmy’s brother Adel, who was attending the session.

He said they would appeal the verdict but added that he had little faith in the system. “Everything is corrupt,” he said.

Greste’s brother Andrew said he was “gutted” and also vowed to appeal.

“I swear they will pay for this.”

Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop said she was shocked by the verdict, adding that the government would contact newly elected Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and ask him to intervene in the case.

The three received sentences of seven years each in a maximum security prison.

Mohammed, the team’s producer, received an extra three years because of additional charges of possession of ammunition.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Al-Jazeera has said that charge was rooted in a spent shell found in his possession – a souvenir he’d picked up from protests.

There were 17 other co-defendants in the case.

Among them, two British journalists and a Dutch journalist who were not in Egypt and eight others being tried in absentia each received 10-year prison sentences.

Two of them were acquitted, including the son of Mohammed el-Beltagy, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Most of the co-defendants were students, arrested separately and accused of giving footage to the journalists.

The managing director of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera English, Al Anstey, said in a statement that “not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges against them.”

“To have detained them for 177 days is an outrage. To have sentenced them defies logic, sense, and any semblance of justice,” he said.

– with AAP