Ibrahim Halawa arrived back on the cold Dublin soil on October 24, more than four years after being jailed at 17 years old in Cairo.
He stepped off the plane alongside the Irish ambassador to Egypt, Sean O Regan, to a welcoming party at the arrivals terminal of Dublin Airport.
Egyptian security forces had thrown the now 21-year-old into jail in the summer of 2013, along with three of his sisters and hundreds of others, as part of a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests against Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who was then newly in power.
The siblings, whose parents are of Egyptian origin, had been demonstrating after two of Halawa’s friends were killed while rallying. While the sisters were freed months later, Halawa, the youngest of the family who looked older than his 17 years, was kept in custody.
