Trial of Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa to open in Cairo

The trial is set to open in a Cairo court of Irish national Ibrahim Halawa, who along with 493 other accused, is charged with murder, attempted murder and destruction of public property during an attack on a police station in August 2013.

The proceedings have been postponed twice due to the difficulty of processing such a large number of accused, who should be simultaneously present in the cages that serve as the dock in Egyptian courts.

Ireland’s Ambassador to Egypt, Isolde Moylan, who is to attend the court, said the venue remained the same but three new judges have been appointed who may accept that the accused appear in batches. She added that the first phase of the proceedings would involve calling out the names of the accused to ascertain their presence; the second phase would involve checking that all had lawyers; and the third would be lawyers’ statements.

All this means that the trial could be protracted, with further delays. Charges are rarely dropped at the start of a trial, the Ambassador was told by Mr Halawa’s lawyer.

Presidential decree

Ms Moylan said the Embassy was trying to obtain clarification of a decree issued by Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, which stated that foreign convicts and defendants could be transferred to their home countries to serve sentences or stand trial. However, although Mr Halawa is Irish-born, his parents are Egyptian and he is seen as an Egyptian national.

Mr Halawa (18) was detained at al-Fateh mosque in Ramses Square in central Cairo on August 17th last year, along with his three sisters, during a banned march protesting against the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi, a senior figure in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. His sisters, Somaia (28), Fatima (23) and Omaima (21), were held for three months, released, and permitted to return to Ireland, from where they refuse to return to Egypt to face trial.

Protest camp

The four, who were visiting Cairo, joined the brotherhood’s protest camp at Rabaa al-Adawiya square in Cairo’s Nasr City on July 3rd, 2013, the day Mr Morsi was toppled. When the army dispersed the protest camp and a smaller sit-in at al-Nahda square on August 14th, 693 civilians and 10 policemen were killed.

Mr Halawa has been sharing a cell in the forbidding Tora Prison with Mr Greste and two other al-Jazeera journalists, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, who have been sentenced and are awaiting their appeal.

Ms Moylan, who visited Mr Halawa 10 days ago, said he was “cheerful” at present. At the start of his detention in Tora he was confined to a room holding 15 men and was beaten. He now receives visits from his mother. The men cook for themselves and receive food from their families.

Mr Halawa is the son of Sheikh Hussein Halawa, Ireland’s most senior Muslim cleric and imam of the mosque in Clonskeagh, Dublin.