But soon the atmosphere changed.
Judge Mohamed Nagy removed his trademark sunglasses as he mumbled the verdict into the microphone.
The verdict was followed by a moment of stunned silence, then the court erupted. Families of the accused surged across the room to the defendants' cage, but were held back by police. As the journalists and their co-defendants left the room, Mr Greste lifted a raised fist in a symbol of defiance. Only Mr Fahmy clung onto the cage, but was eventually dragged away by police as he shouted: "They will pay for this".
Andrew Greste, Mr Greste's brother, said the family was "gutted, absolutely gutted."
He added: "He'll be shattered. This wasn't the outcome he'll have been expecting. But he's not giving up, and we're not giving up as a family."
Mr Greste, an award-winning Australian journalist, previously worked as a correspondent for the BBC and had been based in Kenya. Mr Fahmy, Al Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief, is known for his coverage of Egypt's restive Sinai peninsula. He is a Canadian-Egyptian citizen.
After the sentence was announced, Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, said that they would continue to press for Mr Greste's release.
Al Jazeera said the sentencing "defies logic, sense and any sense of justice."
And a British official, inside the courtroom, said the verdict showed that Egypt's space for press freedom was shrinking.
"We are deeply disappointed and concerned about the verdict," he said. "We have had our concerns from the start about how the process was conducted against the defendants, both the journalists and the students."
Prosecutors had demanded that the journalists be handed the maximum sentence – seven years for Mr Greste, an Australian citizen, and 15 for Mr Fahmy and Mr Mohamed, due to their status as Egyptian nationals.
Their ten month ordeal has drawn stinging criticism from rights groups.
Critics say they are being persecuted for simply doing their job, and that they are casualties of a geopolitical battle between Egypt and Qatar, which owns the Al Jazeera network.
The trial has been a drawn out and often confusing process.
The prosecution presented evidence that included videos of a trotting horse, and images retrieved from Al Jazeera hard drives that were in use before the three journalists came to work for the channel.
Mr Fahmy and Mr Greste were arrested in late December, after a police raid on their temporary office suites in a five-star Cairo hotel. A 22-minute video clip of their arrest, set to the bombastic soundtrack of a Hollywood film, was later shown on Egyptian television. Mr Mohamed was arrested from his home on the same day. He says police shot his dog, Gatsby.
When Egypt's general prosecutor finally released the indictment, one month later, there were twenty names on the charge sheet, including Al Jazeera correspondents not based in Egypt and a group of students with no known connections to the journalists.
The five students who have appeared in court have repeatedly claimed that they were tortured in custody. Two months into the trial, they were joined by a ninth defendant, who is the head of an Islamic charity.
The Qatari-owned Al Jazeera network has faced mounting pressure from the Egyptian authorities since former president Mohamed Morsi was deposed in a military takeover on July 3. Its Egyptian outlet, al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr, is one of the few remaining channels perceived as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The defendants are among up to 41,000 people who have been arrested in the year since Mr Morsi's overthrow.
In private Egyptian officials often admit that the case has been damaging to the country's reputation, but paint it as the result of a power struggle between hardline and moderate elements within Egypt's military-backed authorities.
Speaking ahead of the verdict, Mr Greste's brother Mike said his family had endured a torturous wait. "The days are going extraordinarily slowly," he said, "but we hope it will all be over tomorrow."
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