A Dublin criminal whose prosecution for assault led to one of the worst cases of witness intimidation in recent years has had a prison sentence for assault extended by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
A witness in the case was forced to leave her home, was the subject of an assassination plot and was badly injured in an assault outside a courtroom after giving evidence in the case.
The case attracted little attention and the woman was not included in the State Witness Protection scheme and received no special compensation for ordeal. She was at one stage living in B&B accommodation and was virtually penniless.
In March last year Liam Byrne (21) of Raleigh Square, Dublin, received a four-year sentence for an assault on a former League of Ireland soccer player, Mr Trevor Donnelly, at the Abrakebabra take-away in the Crumlin Shopping Centre on April 23rd, 2000.
Seven weeks before the assault,Byrne had received a four-year suspended sentence for armed robbery. When he was convicted of the assault, the suspended sentence was activated and he was sent to prison.
The Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the decision to run the four-year sentence for assault concurrently with the robbery sentence was too lenient. It extended his sentence by two years, giving Byrne an effective six-year sentence for assaulting Mr Donnelly.
Byrne attacked Mr Donnelly with a baseball bat and struck him a number of times on the head, leaving him with permanent injuries.
During his trial last December, the court heard that he had repeatedly threatened Mr Donnelly's girlfriend and mother of his two children, Ms Jennifer Doyle.
Gardaí described Byrne as a particularly vicious young career criminal and a central figure in one of the largest drug-dealing gangs in south inner Dublin.
The gang has links with local IRA figures who provide it with protection from other gangs. At least two other local criminal figures have been targeted and attacked by the IRA after crossing some of Byrne's associates.
After Byrne was charged with the assault, his criminal associates embarked on a campaign of intimidation against Ms Doyle, the principal witness in the case. She was threatened that if she gave evidence she would be killed or disfigured. Gardaí discovered that Byrne's associates had contacted a gunman in the INLA with an offer of cash to assassinate Ms Doyle.
Ms Doyle and Mr Donnelly had to leave their home in Tallaght and had to live incognito in hotels outside Dublin. The pressure created a great strain on them and they separated for a while.
In October 2000, Ms Doyle was badly injured when she was attacked by a group of Byrne's associates in a corridor in the Four Courts just after giving evidence.