Ibrahim Halawa must be released from his Egyptian prison, says South Dublin’s mayor.

Sarah Holland travelled to Brussels recently as part of a human rights delegation led by Lynn Boylan MEP and the Halawa sisters in order to raise the plight of the Firhouse teenager, who was jailed in 2013 pending trial for his alleged involvement in anti-government protests while visiting Cairo with his family.

“Ibrahim has been in the Egyptian prison system now for over two years, when he should have been in Trinity studying to become an engineer with his school friends,” said Mayor Holland, who was part of a delegation that included Halawa’s legal team and representatives of Amnesty International and Reprieve, who have designated the Dubliner as a prisoner of conscience.

Amnesty added that he “was shot in his hand when the security forces stormed [the mosque where he was arrested] but was not given access to medical care for his injury, and the only treatment he received was from a cellmate who happened to be a doctor.”

Halawa was visited in August by Pat Breen, chair of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs committee, who reported “a young man in reasonable spirits in what are very trying circumstances”.

But since then Mayor Holland says Reprieve has had difficulty communicating with the Department of Foreign Affairs, concerns echoed by the Halawa family.

Meanwhile, barristers from Doughty Street chambers claim that strong intervention by the Government in Halawa’s case is conspicuous by its absence.

They compared his situation to that of his former cellmate, journalist Peter Greste, who was deported to Australia – and effectively released – after his conviction for colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood in what’s been widely condemned as a show trial.

Halawa is due to appear in court again on 15 December.