Irish Prisoners Abroad
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I actually cannot believe my ears. Daniel's family are appealing for the Government to send observers because they fear a show trial situation. The detainees are being prosecuted under anti-organised crime legislation. They are being tried in a high-security court, not a normal court. They are being denied access during the trial to their own legal team. They are brought in handcuffed and put behind high-security glass. They have been kept in more or less solitary confinement – since last September in Daniel's case, or eight months. It is completely unprecedented.
Daniel's legal team has called for the judge to be recused, such is the level of bias that has been directed against those on trial, the "Ulm five". To remind the Minister, they were protesting. It was an act of civil disobedience but there was no threat of violence. They videoed themselves. They handed themselves up for arrest peacefully because they were protesting about Elbit Systems or Germany providing arms to Israel for the commission of genocide. Their families are saying the trial is a show trial and that they should be released, and that the Irish Government should send observers to watch the trial to ensure that their rights are upheld at it, given the manner in which it is being conducted. Is the Minister going to do that?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-21