An Egyptian criminal court has acquitted an Irish-Egyptian man kept in pre-trial detention for four years who says he was regularly tortured during his incarceration.
Ibrahim Halawa - arrested at age 17 as part of a deadly crackdown on protests in Cairo and who faced the death penalty - has yet to walk free following Monday's verdict, said defence lawyer Yasmeen Said.
He is the son of a senior Muslim Brotherhood member - a group that swept to power in elections after the 2011 uprising, but is now outlawed by the government of (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi).
Hawala and his three sisters were arrested along with hundreds of others in August 2013, days after security forces violently broke up a sit-in by supporters of then-president Mohammed Morsi, who had been overthrown by the military the previous month.
The Sister were released three months later on bail, but Halawa was kept in custody.
A UK-based international human rights organisation Reprieve, which is assisting Ibrahim, said in a statement Monday's verdict was "long overdue".
"Ibrahim was arrested as a child for the 'crime' of attending a protest, tortured, and tried facing the death penalty alongside adults in an unfair mass trial," said Maya Foa, director of Reprieve.
"For years, these court proceedings - which were designed to punish political dissent - made a mockery of justice."
She also said the Irish government and others "must now not rest until Ibrahim is at home in Ireland".
"The wider international community - including the EU, which helps to fund Egypt's courts - must also call urgently on Egypt to end its use of patently illegal mass trials," she said.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar welcomed Halawa's acquittal and said the case had been an "extraordinarily protracted" one.
"Now that Ibrahim has been cleared of all charges, I expect he will be released as soon as possible and can return home to his family. The government will facilitate his return home at the earliest opportunity," Varadkar said in a statement.