First verdict delivered in Lunney trial

Unnamed man 'YZ' guilty of both charges

A 40-year-old man, who can't be identified, has been found guilty of the false imprisonment and assault of Quinn Industrial Holdings director Kevin Lunney.

The man, named only as YZ, denied the charges but the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court today (Monday) found that the prosecution had proven beyond reasonable doubt that he was one of the three men who abducted Mr Lunney from near his home and assaulted him in a horse box at a yard in Drumbrade, Co Cavan.

YZ went on trial with three co-accused: Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, Alan O’Brien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, and Luke O’Reilly (68), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan. All pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, on September 17, 2019.

Mr Justice Hunt is still delivering the court's judgement in relation to the other three.

Mr Lunney told the trial that he was bundled into the boot of a car near his home and driven to a container where he was threatened and told to resign as a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings and to put a stop to litigation with which he was involved in Ireland and Northern Ireland. His attackers stripped him to his boxer shorts, doused him in bleach, broke his shin 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 Stanley knife. 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.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt presided over the trial and is delivering the court's judgement with Judge David McHugh and Judge Gerard Griffin.

* More to follow