A DUBLIN man who was spotted by gardaí carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle in a sports bag in a city centre street was jailed for four years by the Special Criminal Court yesterday.
The court heard that two plainclothes gardaí stuck in traffic on Wexford Street saw Denis Dwyer carrying a blue sports bag from which could be seen the barrel and stock of an assault rifle.
Garda Terry Gleeson of Harcourt Terrace stopped Dwyer outside a shop on Camden Street and told him to put his hands on the unmarked Garda car for his own safety. He then arrested him.
Dwyer (23), an apprentice plumber, Drumcarra Avenue, Jobstown, Tallaght, pleaded guilty last month to the unlawful possession of a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 21 rounds of ammunition on November 22nd last year.
The State did not proceed with another charge against him of INLA membership.
Garda Gleeson told Michael Bowman, prosecuting, that he was on patrol with Det Garda David Ganley at 8.45pm when he saw Dwyer hurrying along Wexford Street towards Camden Street.
They stopped their car and saw the outline of a rifle in the sports bag from the illumination of a shop window. He said the barrel and stock of the rifle could be seen protruding from the bag.
Garda Gleeson stopped Dwyer, who appeared to be nervous, and he said he had found the bag in a laneway. After his arrest the bag was searched and was found to contain an AK74 assault rifle (a more recent version of the AK 47 rifle). There were two magazines in the bag, one of which was loaded with 21 rounds of ammunition.
During Garda interviews, Dwyer took responsibility for the bag but denied knowing what was in it. He said he was to pick up the bag and it was to be dropped off, but he did not know what were its contents.
Garda Gleeson said that Dwyer lived with his widowed mother, his two sisters and three brothers and had one previous conviction for possession of a baton.
Dwyer’s counsel John Peart SC said his client was not “a career criminal” and was probably being used as a courier.
Sentencing him to four years in prison to date from his arrest last November, Mr Justice Paul Butler, presiding, said the Criminal Justice Act 2000 provided for a mandatory minimum sentence for firearms offences of five years unless there were exceptional circumstances. The judge said that the court considered in this case there were exceptional circumstances, including that Dwyer has admitted the facts from the beginning, had pleaded guilty at an early stage and had never been in prison before.