“I write with a ticking clock closer to my death. For the past two years and three months I have been imprisoned unjustly. I am waiting for my turn on the death rope. My only crime is being innocent. I have waited for the Egyptian government to prove otherwise but it hasn’t.”
Those were the words scribbled down last month in an Egyptian prison by Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa, as he began a hunger strike. He turns 20 today, the 849th day of his detention, his third birthday in a cell.
Two-and-a-half years ago, he had just completed the penultimate year of high school and was eyeing an aviation engineering degree. He was an ambitious, rap music-loving student heading to Egypt, his parents’ country of birth, for a summer holiday.
On Tuesday, his ninth court hearing is due. The mass trial, which has been postponed and adjourned for more than a year, is to be attended by 493 other defendants but there are concerns the date might again be moved further forward.
In any case, “the sheer number of people involved in Ibrahim’s trial renders any concept of due process or the right to a defence meaningless,” according to Reprieve, a UK-based rights group that campaigns against the death-penalty, a punishment that Ibrahim could face if convicted.
Arrested in August 2013 along with hundreds more, the tall, crop-haired student is on trial for an alleged role in violence during protests in Cairo – charges he, witnesses, and his lawyers all deny.
The recent hunger strike has alarmed Ibrahim’s family, human rights organisations and those who have shared a cell with him; their greatest fear is that the Irishman – who suffers from depression – is close to suicide.
Recounting August 17, 2013, the day of their arrest, Ibrahim’s 28-year-old sister Somaia says: “We went to join a peaceful protest against the Rabaa massacre days earlier, where 1,000 people or so were killed.
At 5pm we reached Ramses Square but there were police officers and thugs on the other side. Every time we headed to a different street there were more, and they were shooting at us.
To avoid this, we went to the al-Fateh mosque.”
The mosque, which had become a makeshift morgue, was also under siege. As security forces circled the place of worship packed with hundreds of people, Ibrahim huddled around Somaia and his other sisters, Fatima and Omaima.
