Today, August 17, marks two years of imprisonment for Ibrahim Halawa, a young Irish citizen who was arrested at a protest in Cairo with his three sisters and hundreds of other people. It’s easy to forget now, but two years ago, Cairo was ablaze and in the middle of a period of historic turmoil. Egypt and many North–African and Middle–Eastern countries were in the midst of the tumultuous ‘Arab Spring’. Although Ibrahim and his sisters had been Cairo many times before; their parents were born there and their extended family still lived there; they arrived to an almost unrecognisable city during the summer of 2013.
The Irish Times reports that Ibrahim Halawa, the youngest in the family, was born in 1995 at Dublin’s Coombe Hospital. He went to Holy Rosary primary school in Ballycullen, had a close group of friends, and by all accounts spent his spare time doing the sort of thing that every suburban teenager does: playing football, listening to music, sitting around on walls.
At home, Ibrahim tended to leave the room when the news came on. “The boy is basically not political at all,” says one Irish official. “He’s an Irish schoolboy. He likes sport, music. He writes rap music. He speaks with an ordinary Irish accent. Lovely fella.”
Ibrahim’s parents were born in Egypt, and their extended families live there. So it was common for Ibrahim and his siblings to travel there in summer to spend time with their cousins. Ibrahim had just finished his Leaving Cert when he and his three sisters flew to Cairo in late June. He would later say that he had wanted to go on a post–Leaving Cert holiday to Spain with his friends, but he was asked to accompany his sisters to Egypt. “I wish I’d gone to Spain,” Ibrahim told a visitor last year.
Earlier in 2013, the elected President Mohamed Morsi was removed by army chief General Abdel Fattah el–Sisi after the June 2013 Egyptian protests and the 2013 Egyptian coup d’état. Mr Morsi himself had been President for only a short time, since June 2012. When he was removed from office, many of his supporters including the Halawa’s took to the streets in protest reminiscent of the protests the brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. These events are important when it comes to considering Ibrahim Halawa and his two year detention, he was 17 at the time of his arrest.
On August 16 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood called for a ‘day of rage’ in Ramses Square in response to the demolition by security forces of a protest encampment in Rabaa al–Adawiya Square, which Human Rights Watch said left at least 817 people dead. The events that enfolded afterward are well documented and ended with Ibrahim Halawa and his three sisters taking refuge in the al–Fateh mosque on the advice of their father who was back in Dublin.
What happened next remains in dispute to this day. Irish officials say safe passage was guaranteed to the ambassador and the Irish government, and that it would have been guaranteed to the Halawa’s in person. However, the family says there was no such thing as safe passage, given the confusion at the scene and the fact that the mosque was surrounded by police and angry local residents. Amnesty International, which has declared Ibrahim a prisoner of conscience, says it agrees safe passage was not an option and that it is “understandable” from “the video evidence and the teargas coming into the mosque as well as the sound of gunfire outside, that people would fear for their own lives if they were to come out of the mosque at this point.”
At about 2pm the next day, security forces entered the mosque and remaining protesters were escorted out. The Halawa’s, with several hundred others, had been inside for 17 hours. The siblings were split into two groups and put in police vans. The three Halawa sisters were held at a women’s prison for three months before they were released on bail and returned to Ireland in November 2013. Ibrahim remains in prison.
He was first sent to an overcrowded, unsanitary detention centre adjacent to the notorious Tora prison. Later he was transferred to Al Salam, a military detention centre where conditions were no better and, according to one source, overcrowding was so chronic that it was difficult to lie down.
After an intervention on his behalf by the Irish authorities, Ibrahim was moved to Al Marg, a low–security prison for inmates serving the final stage of their sentences. He was there between November 2013 and August 2014, when he was transferred to Tora in advance of his trial.
Ibrahim is still awaiting a trail that has been postponed and adjourned several times since August 2014. If and when the trial happens, Ibrahim will stand with493 other people in a mass trial which Amnesty argues “cannot meet international fair trial standards as all the defendants must be present in court in order to be able to hear and challenge the prosecution case and present a defence, in person or through a lawyer. They must be able to call witnesses on their behalf and to examine witnesses against them.”
Today, to mark his two years of imprisonment the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan TD has penned an article in the Irish Independent calling for his release and restraint.