'Events like this can never be erased'

Sentencing hearing for three men convicted of abduction and serious assault of businessman

The physical scars and mental trauma of the kidnap and assault on businessman Kevin Lunney will remain with him and his family for the rest of their lives, the Special Criminal Court has heard.

Mr Lunney wrote a victim impact statement for the court, which was read out at a sentencing hearing this morning for the three men convicted of abducting him from near his home in Fermanagh and torturing him in a horse trailer in Cavan.

The director of QIH, since rebranded as Mannok, wrote that he thinks every day of the effect the ordeal has on his wife and children, saying: "The anguish they have had to endure is a greater torment to me than the physical pain of the attack."

He said that he was glad that, following the verdict, he and his family have been able to "put it out of our immediate focus" but added that "events like this can never be erased".

Addressing the men convicted of assaulting him, he said: "I don't know why they decided to do what they did. I don't know them and they don't know me."

He said he was "saddened they have ruined their lives by their actions" and he sympathised with their families. He said that while he can't "fathom the reasoning that enticed them to do this, there will never be a place in our community for violence or any other form of intimidation."

He also thanked Aaron Brady, Celine Duignan and others who stopped to help him after his kidnappers abandoned him by the side of a country road and the nurses and doctors who treated him for his injuries.

Following a trial this year the Special Criminal Court convicted three men of false imprisonment and intentionally causing harm to Mr Lunney at a yard at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17, 2019.

The court is today holding a sentence hearing for the three men, Alan O’Brien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3; Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and a third man known as YZ, who can't be identified by order of the court.

In his testimony earlier this year, Mr Lunney said that 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 Quinn Industrial Holdings 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 Stanley knife. They left him bloodied, beaten and shivering on a country road at Drumcoghill near Crossdoney in Co Cavan where he was discovered by a man driving a tractor.