Asked how long it would be until the reporter was back home in Brisbane, she would not be drawn.
"When he's ready to come back and not before," she said. "He needs that space. I'm sure he's going to be fine."
The veteran reporter was last year sentenced to seven years' jail for spreading false news and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
But after a campaign that involved the US President, the Australian Prime Minister, other world leaders and journalists across the globe, Morsi's successor, Abdel-fattah al-Sisi, expelled Greste under a new law allowing foreign prisoners to be deported.
The Greste family's euphoria has been dimmed by the fact that the Australian's two Al-Jazeera colleagues remain locked up for the same crime.
His father, Juris, said his son would not rest until his two workmates, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed, who is Egyptian, also had their freedom.
"We think about them still, every moment of the day, and hope they can have a moment like this very, very soon," he said.
Andrew Greste told reporters his brother had enjoyed beer and pork once he reached the safety of Cyprus.
"... two of the rare commodities in an Egyptian prison," he laughed.
And he said beer and prawns would be on the menu when his brother finally got home.
The family last night planned to crack open a bottle of champagne that has been in the fridge since last year, when they expected Peter to be cleared at his trial.
Instead he was handed a seven-year jail term that stunned them and the Australian Government, sparking a tireless diplomatic campaign to have the reporter freed.
A smiling Juris Greste said Australian diplomatic staff in Egypt deserved a knighthood for their efforts.
The family said it would be an emotional affair when Peter finally returned to Australia.
The last time he was on home soil was in August 2013, just a few months before his arrest in Egypt.
"There'll be a tear or two shed, I think," his brother said. "And mum will probably put him over her knee," his father added.
Security officials in Egypt said that Fahmy would be deported to Canada within days. There was no word on the fate of Mohamed.
All three men maintained the charges were baseless, and that they had been used as pawns in a wider political game with Qatar, a staunch backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, and owner of the Al-Jazeera network.
The network's coverage, particularly that of its Egyptian affiliate station, has been a thorn in the side of al-Sisi, fuelling a spat between Egypt and Qatar as domestic critics have been arrested in their thousands. But relations started to thaw in December.
Peter Greste. photo / AP
Egypt's regime has led a crackdown against opponents since it came to power in a 2013 coup, killing hundreds and jailing thousands.
Mohamed's family spoke yesterday of their fears international attention would ebb from his case once Greste and Fahmy were deported.
"I hope they support us and don't leave Baher behind," said Mohamed's brother Assem.
A rare win for global pressure
The release of Peter Greste is a rare triumph for international pressure over a regime that has otherwise remained deaf to Western criticism.
His imprisonment, along with that of Mohamed Fahmy, his Egyptian-Canadian bureau chief, and Baher Mohamed, his Egyptian freelance producer, has provided President Abdel-fattah al-Sisi with a giant diplomatic difficulty at a time when his Government was trying to show off its progressive credentials.
The journalists' arrest in 2013 drew condemnation around the world, and Western diplomats have claimed it was a stock issue raised in meetings with Egyptian officials. Other abuses have passed with less of a furore - few now mention the killing of more than 1000 protesters in a single day in August 2013.
Sisi had insisted that direct intervention on his part was not possible, citing the independence of the judiciary. In November he appeared to find a way out, decreeing that detainees with foreign citizenship could be finally deported to their home countries.
Greste's freedom also owes a lot to Egypt's slow rapprochement with Qatar, the owners of the Al-Jazeera network and staunch backers of former President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. The two countries had been locked in a vicious spat since Morsi's overthrow, but relations started to thaw in December as part of a reconciliation within the nations of the Gulf Co-operation Council.
The end also looks to be in sight now for Greste's colleague, Fahmy, but questions hang over the future of Mohamed, who does not have the luxury of a foreign passport.
If Mohamed is not released, the deportations will look all the more cynical. He is among more than 41,000 people detained in Egypt since the overthrow of Morsi in 2013.
At least 12 journalists were jailed in Egypt last year, giving it one of the worst records for press freedom in the world.
The Al-Jazeera three
Peter Greste, 49
Australian Greste had barely arrived in Cairo to work as a correspondent when he was arrested along with Fahmy. After freelancing in Britain, he joined the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent in 1995. The following year he covered Yugoslavia for Reuters before returning to the BBC. Greste spent more than a decade with the British broadcaster, reporting from across Latin America, the Middle East and Africa before joining Al-Jazeera in 2011 - the year he won a prestigious Peabody Award for a BBC report on Somalia. Greste's hometown is Brisbane but he now lives in Nairobi. He also holds Latvian citizenship.
Mohamed Fahmy, 40
Canadian-Egyptian Fahmy was working as a senior producer for Al-Jazeera English in Cairo at the time of his arrest. He previously worked for the New York Times, CNN, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and before the Arab Spring, covered the war in Iraq. Fahmy was born in Kuwait. He graduated from Cairo American College before relocating to Canada with his parents, where he earned degrees from Montreal's LaSalle College and Vancouver's City University. He co-authored a photo documentary of the January 25th Revolution, and was a winner of the Tom Renner Investigative Journalism Award in 2012 for producing a 30-minute special documentary for CNN called Death in the Desert. He also wrote a book about the US invasion of Iraq.
Baher Mohamed, 31
Egyptian Baher Mohammed began working as a TV researcher and producer for the Japanese channel Asahi, and covered the 2011 Libyan uprising before joining al-Jazeera last year as a producer. He has two children and lives in Cairo. His father was at one point the manager of the Muslim Brotherhood's television channel, named January 25, which was launched after Egypt's 2011 uprising.
- additional reporting AAP, AP
