‘DISGUSTING’
Furious attack on Mary Lou as she tweets pictures of constituency rival with ex-Sinn Fein councillor guilty of waterboarding torture
SINN Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald was last night embroiled in an extraordinary spat over her attempts to whitewash her links to waterboarding torturer Jonathan Dowdall.
Constituency rival and former lord mayor of Dublin, republican councillor Christy Burke branded her ‘a disgusting human being’ after she tweeted a picture of Burke with the former Sinn Féin councillor.
The tweet was an attempt to shift the focus of Dowdall’s embarrassing
links with Sinn Féin’s top brass, which used to be close. Dowdall pleaded guilty this week to imprisoning and torturing a man in the garage of his home.
Cllr Burke told the Irish Mail on Sunday last night that he would not consider Ms McDonald a republican
He also attacked her for a statement in which she backed the Special Criminal Court for convicting Dowdall.
He also said her tweet was sent out at ‘wine o’clock’ on Friday evening.
Ms McDonald – who herself was photographed with Dowdall, 39, several times when he was a Dublin Sinn Féin councillor – tweeted the pictures of him with Cllr Burke in an attempt to distance Dowdall from Sinn Féin.
Dowdall, with an address at Navan Road, Dublin, and his father Patrick Dowdall, 60, of the same address, both admitted to falsely imprisoning Alexander Hurley by detaining him without his consent at the house on January 15, 2015. They also pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Mr Hurley.
Dowdall believed he was being ‘duped’ over the sale of a motorbike when he uncovered a series of scamming allegations against Mr Hurley during an internet search.
He invited Mr Hurley to dinner but instead, he and his father imprisoned him in the garage for three hours and tried to force a confession out of him.
The victim, who has prior fraud convictions, pleaded for his life as Dowdall waterboarded him by covering his face with a cloth and doused his head with water. Patrick Dowdall threatened at the same time to cut his fingers off with a pliers ‘knuckle by knuckle’.
Ms McDonald tweeted three pictures of now-independent Cllr Burke with Dowdall, taken in September 2015.
Alongside the pictures she wrote: ‘This terrible story of thuggery carried on all day. This photo clarifies political allegiances of convicted person.’
In an earlier statement, she said: ‘I welcome the conviction of Jonathan Dowdall in court today. The details of the attack perpetrated by him are deeply shocking. I hope the sentence delivered by the court reflects the seriousness of the offence and the trauma endured by his victim.
‘Jonathan Dowdall left Sinn Féin some years ago. He subsequently worked with, and supported, a political opponent of Sinn Féin in the Dublin Central constituency.’
Cllr Burke responded angrily to Ms McDonald’s tweet. He told the MoS: ‘Jonathan Dowdall was a Sinn Féin councillor and a neighbour of Ms McDonald’s – in the same constituency. If she can’t accept that, well, then the Nile is not the only river in Egypt.’
The councillor added: ‘I don’t want to let Mary Lou upset my weekend but I think that was done at, what do they call it, wine o’clock. Mary Lou has discredited herself by trying to discredit me.’
He said ‘decent republicans don’t discredit other republicans’, adding that he, therefore, ‘wouldn’t consider her a republican’.
He said he was surprised to hear Ms McDonald supporting the workings of the Special Criminal Court, adding: ‘Somebody needs to take her on. If she wants to start a discrediting campaign she’s met her match. If she wants to take on a master, tell her to bring it on. She’s met her match.
‘From the calls I got this morning from people in the constituency, they actually described her as a disgusting human being, not alone for what she was saying about Dowdall. A disgusting human being, who is trying to discredit a decent guy who works in the constituency, not spooks in it. There were many victims in the past, including women, and Ms McDonald didn’t jump to their rescue.’
In response to Mr Burke, Ms McDonald told the MoS: ‘My post was simply to clarify Jonathan Dowdall’s political affiliations. He is responsible for his own actions. Not anyone else.’
Dowdall resigned from Sinn Féin and his city council seat in February 2015. At the time of his resignation, Sinn Féin group leader on Dublin City Council Séamas McGrattan, said: ‘I would like to acknowledge his commitment to the party and I am sorry to lose such a valuable member.
‘I enjoyed working with Jonathan and I would like to offer him a sincere thanks on behalf of all the team. I hope Jonathan will remain involved with Sinn Féin in the north inner city.’
‘She has discredited herself by trying to discredit me’ ‘If she wants to take on a master – bring it on’