‘LET ME OUT OF JAIL, MY CELLMATE SMOKES’

Suspect on assault charges claims he’s treated ‘like an old dog’

A MAN who is facing serious assault charges has asked a judge to release him from jail – because his cellmate is a smoker.

Gary Brodie, 33, was arrested and brought back to Ireland from Scotland on a European Arrest Warrant earlier this year. He has been in custody for the past two months, facing the assault charges.

Brodie appeared at Letterkenny District Court in Co. Donegal yesterday, where he sought bail on the charges. He told the court that he has been held at Dublin’s Cloverhill Prison.

He told Judge Paul Kelly: ‘I’m held on remand for the past two months in terrible conditions. I don’t smoke but the guy I’m sharing a cell with is a guy who smokes. I’m also being forced to sleep on the floor on a mattress.

‘I’m being treated like an old dog. I wouldn’t keep my dog in those conditions.’

However, Detective Garda Michael Galvin told the court that he was objecting to the bail application. He said the alleged assault cases involved a situation in which a man was allegedly stabbed with a broken bottle and received serious injuries.

He said Brodie was a flight risk and that the seriousness of the offences meant that he should not be given bail.

Brodie had claimed that he has an address of a former prison friend in Crumlin, Dublin, where he could stay if he was released on bail.

He is due to appear before Letterkenny Circuit Court on the assault charges on December 5.

Brodie had resisted extradition from Scotland earlier this year, claiming that the IRA would kill him.

He claimed that he fled Ireland in 2009 after being warned by an IRA member that he had 24 hours to leave or he would be killed.

Brodie said he feared that he would end up like his father William, who disappeared in 1994 and is thought to have been murdered by the IRA.

At another court hearing earlier this year in Scotland, Brodie spat at court sheriff officials and branded them ‘Fenian ba **** ds.’ At Letterkenny District Court yesterday, Judge Kelly said that he was refusing a bail application on separate charges of theft against Brodie. He cited the seriousness of the cases against Brodie and also his bail history.

Brodie asked if he could be remanded back to Castlerea Prison in Co. Roscommon.

Wardens told Judge Kelly that the accused would be transferred back there.

The Irish Prison Service confirmed yesterday that prisoners are exempt from legislation and can smoke in their cells. It also said prison management tried not to place smokers in cells with nonsmokers, but that this was dependent on space.

It said: ‘We would try not to accommodate a smoker with a non-smoker. Every effort is made by prison management to ensure that people who smoke, if they do share a cell, are put in cells with people who are smokers.

‘I couldn’t tell you how many times that would happen, that somebody who is a non-smoker would be put into a cell with a smoker.

‘It’s an operational issue, it depends on what space is available or what can be accommodated. We don’t have non-smoking and smoking wings... like you would have in a hotel.’

Claimed the IRA would kill him