Man fails in bid to quash conviction related to kidnap of bank chief

The view of a United Nations Human Rights Committee that the decision to try a Dublin man before the non-jury Special Criminal Court breached his right to equality before the law cannot be invoked to invalidate the man's conviction, the Supreme Court has declared.

The five-judge court yesterday unanimously dismissed an appeal by Joseph Kavanagh against the High Court's refusal to grant him leave to take judicial review proceedings aimed at quashing his conviction for offences connected with the kidnapping of a former National Irish Bank chief executive, Mr Jim Lacey, in 1993.

Kavanagh (43), Ben Bulben Road, Crumlin, was jailed in 1997 for 12 years by the Special Criminal Court and has two years left to serve. He had sought leave to seek orders quashing his conviction on a number of grounds, including that his rights to equality before the law and to equal protection had been violated through the decision to try him before the Special Criminal Court. In rejecting Kavanagh's application for leave, the High Court stated he had established no arguable grounds to take the proceedings.

In his judgment upholding the High Court decision, with which the other four judges agreed, Mr Justice Fennelly said Kavanagh's difficulty was that Ireland's obligation under Article 29 of the Constitution to respect the principles of international law related only to Ireland's relations with other States and conferred no rights on individuals.