Gardaidon’tplanto questionPakistan drugaccused

October 1995

A Wicklow man released this week after being flogged for drug smuggling in Pakistan is unlikely to face Garda questioning about his activities on his return home.

48-year-old Oliver Byrne and his accomplice Brian O’Loughlin (40) from Dublin were freed by a special customs court in Peshawar, having spent eight months in custody following their arrest last February for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of hashish in a van.

A spokesperson at the Garda Press Office said this week that they had no plans to interview either O’Loughlin or Oliver Byrne, who lived formerly at Glen of the Downs, and was at one time a director of a Bray aluminium firm.

‘We are not intending to speak to these two men about this incident,’ the spokesperson said. ‘ Their crime was committed and has been dealt with outside of the jurisdiction.’

The two Irishmen became the first non-Muslims to be flogged under Islamic Law in Pakistan, when they were sentenced and received five lashes for the smuggling offence, last month.

When they appeared in court last Monday they pleaded guilty, and said they were putting themselves at the mercy of the judge.

In handing down his ruling the judge imposed a fine of £390 on each of the defendants, noting that they had already served time in custody, and had each been flogged.

Byrne and O’Loughlin are reported to have bought the drugs for 200,000 after travelling from Ireland through Italy, Greece, Turkey and Iran early this year. They were arrested in February outside of the tribal town of Dara, infamous for its drugs and weapons bazaars.

When asked who had masterminded their drug smuggling plan, Oliver Byrne told a local Pakistani journalist that he could not disclose who was behind their alleged plan, or how the money had been raised.