Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I join the Minister in condemning the terrorist attacks on the Coptic churches in Egypt.

It is not surprising that more hours have gone into this case than others because Mr. Halawa has been in prison for three and a half years. The latest technical file produced for the Egyptian court would seem to confirm the fact that there is no evidence against him of anything other than protesting. The problem is that nothing that has been done so far, including the parliamentary delegation of which I was a part, has worked in releasing our citizen home. What more does the Government intend to do? Was the European External Action Service in attendance at the most recent court case? If not, why not? Are there countries that continue to block the attendance of the EEAS, and is the Government making particular efforts to discuss with those Governments the withdrawal of any such block?

The other issue is that it is all very well for el-Sisi to tell us that he will not release Mr. Halawa until the court case is over, but the court case can go on indefinitely and each court appearance that passes seems to have a bad impact on Ibrahim's spirit, understandably, because the case just seems to stretch indefinitely into the future.

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