Ex-SF councillor is jailed for 12 years
FORMER Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who waterboarded and threatened to kill a man who he believed was trying to defraud him has been jailed for 12 years by the Special Criminal Court.
The court found that Dowdall’s victim, Alexander Hurley, was subjected to a ‘gratuitous, humiliating and degrading’ ordeal during which he was physically and mentally tortured.
Dowdall claimed he was a member of the IRA and Mr Hurley was told he would be ‘chopped up’ and ‘fed to the dogs’.
Patrick Dowdall, the father of the former councillor, was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in the offence.
Jonathan Dowdall was also given a concurrent four years and his father a concurrent three years in prison for threatening to kill the victim.
Presiding Judge Isobel Kennedy said yesterday that these were ‘most serious offences’.
‘The injured party was subjected to a horrendous and terrifying ordeal, he endured what can only be described as physical and mental torture at the hands of the Dowdalls,’ she said. Last month, footage recorded on a mobile phone was shown to the court of Jonathan Dowdall, 40, wearing a balaclava and holding a tea-towel to the man’s face before pouring water over his head.
At a sentence hearing last month, Detective Inspector William Hanrahan, of the Special Detective Unit, told prosecuting counsel Vincent Heneghan SC that on March 9 last year gardaí were searching Jonathan Dowdall’s house on the Navan Road, in relation to a separate matter, when they found a USB flash drive.
When gardaí examined the flash drive, they discovered that it contained footage of a man imprisoned in Dowdall’s garage, the court heard. The victim, Alexander Hurley, was located by gardaí on May 28 last year, and he gave a statement about the incident.
The court heard Mr Hurley had contacted Jonathan Dowdall through donedeal.ie about a motorcycle Dowdall had advertised for sale.
In a victim impact statement, read to the court by Vincent Heneghan SC, Mr Hurley said that it was a ‘brutal and heinous act of crime’ and that his ‘life has turned into a tower collapsing’.
Ms Kennedy said all sentences were to run concurrently and were backdated to May 17, 2016.