TORONTO -- Protesters marched on Parliament Hill today, pleading for Ottawa to intervene in the case of Yasser Albaz, a Canadian man who has been detained in a Cairo prison for more than a year — without charges.

The situation has recently become dire. His family fears he’s sick with COVID-19 and could die if he isn’t brought home.

Outside the Prime Minister’s Office, protesters demanded for the government to step in and facilitate his immediate release.

The most passionate pleas come from Albaz’s anguished daughter, Amal.

“It’s been a nightmare that we have yet to wake up from,” she told CTV News.

“We are scared that he will come back in a box.”

Amal is eight months pregnant with her third child, but at a time when she should be getting rest, she has been pounding the pavement trying to get her father’s case heard. 

“I don't want to be out there in my ninth month protesting in the streets under the heat,” she said. “I want him home. Canada should have brought him home so I don't need to be doing this.”

It’s been 484 days since Albaz was detained by Egyptian authorities on his way home from a business trip.

He was crammed inside a shared cell in Cairo’s notorious Tora Prison.

Sixteen months later, the dual citizen -- who was travelling on his Canadian passport -- still has not been charged with anything.

One person who knows how fraught an experience a stay in Tora can be is Canadian filmmaker John Greyson.

Greyson still struggles with the memories from when he was detained for 50 days in that very prison in 2013 -- also without charges.

He told CTV News he remembers having “buckets of urine thrown at us … being forced to sit in the hot sun for hours.

“When I first heard about Yasser's case, it was like six years disappeared and I was suddenly back in the cell,” he said. “Sharing a 10-metre-by-three-metre cell with 36 other guys.”

There’s a new urgency to bring Albaz home now -- his family says the 52-year-old engineer is suffering from severe fever and fatigue.

There are reports of a COVID-19 outbreak at the prison, and Albaz is not in isolation, according to his family.

“He's experiencing COVID symptoms,” Amal said, “which is a matter of life and death.”

Advocates are adamant that the government should bring him home. 

In February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed the case with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Yesterday, when asked about the case, Trudeau told media that his government takes “very seriously the health and safety of Canadian detained abroad.

“We will continue to do everything we can to ensure that they are properly treated and, eventually, if possible, brought home,” he said.

For Amal, this answer was nowhere near enough.

“I am beyond disappointed by the prime minister's answer,” she said. “He didn't even mention his name. And when you don't mention someone by name, to you they don't exist.”

The family says Albaz’s brother used to visit him in prison every couple of weeks.

But because of COVID-19, they haven’t been able to have any contact with him since March.