Delight and relief as Ibrahim Halawa cleared

Ministers and diplomats are working to get Ibrahim Halawa home “as soon as possible” after his four-year ordeal in an Egyptian prison came to an end when a Cairo court acquitted him of all the charges against him.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the 21-year-old Dubliner could be home in days, but Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney cautioned that the process could take a while because of the formalities involved.

Ibrahim, who was 17 when he was detained, could have faced the death penalty after being subjected to a mass trial involving hundreds of people rounded up during anti-government protests in 2013 when he was holidaying with relatives in the Egyptian capital.