The scars and mental torture will stay with me and my family for the rest of our lives..

ACQUITTED

THE physical and mental scars from the violent kidnap of Kevin Lunney will remain with him and his family for the rest of their lives, Dublin’s Special Criminal Court heard yesterday.

A sentencing hearing for the three men convicted of abducting and torturing him also heard pleas from one defence barrister for authorities to “follow the money” and consider who benefitted from the kidnapping.

In a victim impact statement read by Det Garda Linda Harkin, Mr Lunney wrote: “The anguish they have had to endure is a greater torment to me than the physical pain.

“Events like this can never be erased and we will need to find continuing strength in the support and comfort of many good people.”

He said the campaign of intimidation against Quinn Industrial Holdings, of which he is a director, “was intensely difficult for those directly targeted and a cause of much apprehension and fear in the community”.

He added: “I don’t know the reason why the defendants decided to do what they did.

“I don’t know them or they me. I don’t know whether their absence of any personal agenda diminishes or aggravates what they have done.

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“Neither can I fathom the intent or reasoning that encouraged and enticed them to commit this crime.

“I trust those involved now realise that there will never be a place in our community for violence, or any other form of intimidation.”

Prosecutor Sean Guerin said the court should set a pre-mitigation sentence for the three men of between 15 years and life imprisonment.

In his testimony earlier this year, Mr Lunney said he was bundled into the boot of an Audi near his home and driven to a container where he was threatened and told to resign as a director of QIH and to put a stop to litigation with which he was involved north and south of the border.

His attackers stripped him to his boxer shorts, doused him in bleach, broke his leg with two blows of a wooden bat, beat him on the ground, cut his face and scored the letters QIH into his chest with a blade.

They left him bloodied, beaten and shivering on a country road at Drumcoghill in Co Cavan where he was discovered by a man driving a tractor.

Alan O’brien, 40, of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, Darren Redmond, 27, from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and a man known as YZ, were convicted of false imprisonment and intentionally causing harm to Mr Lunney in Ballinagh, Co Cavan, on September 17, 2019.

Luke Kelly was acquitted of the charges. Det Supt James O’leary told the court yesterday YZ has 180 previous convictions including one for impeding the apprehension or prosecution of a murderer in 2009.

He received a six-year sentence for that offence.

O’brien, also known as Alan Rooney, has 40 previous convictions including one for robbing €12,000 from an elderly man in Virginia, Co Cavan, for which he received a suspended four-year sentence.

Redmond has convictions for possession and criminal damage.

Supt O’leary said none had any “appreciable employment history”. The witness agreed with Michael O’higgins SC, for YZ, the purpose of the offences against Mr Lunney was to “remove people who were legitimately in control of QIH, making vacancies for other people”.

Supt O’leary agreed YZ was not going to benefit from that but was the “muscle” hired to “do the dirty work”.

Mr O’higgins described “a kind of pyramid” where people at the top get the benefit with the planners below them and below that the “people who did the dirty work, who are the muscle and that would be my client”.

The court also made an order that YZ, whose identity has been protected by a court order, can be named from midnight on December 13.

Judge Tony Hunt, presiding in the non-jury court, said sentence will be passed on December 20.

Luke O’reilly was found not guilty