BUSINESSMAN HAS AN ILLUMINATING HISTORY
FROM brushing shoulders with the Sinn Fein bigwigs to helping the Hutch gang attack.
On Monday, Jonathan Dowdall will be sentenced for his involvement in the Regency Hotel attack on February 5, 2016.
The criminal has admitted he facilitated the murder of Kinahan yob David Byrne by making a room at the hotel available for a criminal organisation or its members the night beforehand.
Dowdall (44) is now set to begin his second term behind bars from next week more than than eight years on from being elected to Dublin City Council.
Back then, Dowdall had appeared to build a successful life.
From Dublin’s north inner city, he became an electrician in his mid 20s and ran a successful business.
He’d later go on to run for a seat in Dublin City Council.
At the time he had posed in pictures with its now President Mary Lou McDonald and Gerry Adams.
And in May 2014, the father-offour won a council seat.
On February 13, 2015, he resigned from the council claiming he had been the victim of bullying.
Within a year, on February 4, 2016, Dowdall made a room available at the Regency Hotel to help a gang.
Gardai obtained a warrant to raid Dowdall’s €400,000 family home on the Navan road for weapons in March 2016.
Although the guards came away with no guns, they did find a video on a USB key.
It showed Dowdall — still a councillor at the time — and his father in an unrelenting attack on a man in January 2015.
The incident later saw them later found guilty of falsely imprisoning and water-boarding the victim.
In 2017, both he and his father Patrick were sentenced to 12 and eight years although these were shortened on appeal.
In 2021 both men were before the Special Criminal Court once more.