DPP fails to have sentences increased

31/07/2006 - 16:06:15
The Director of Public Prosecutions failed today in his bid to have prison sentences increased on two men, including a man being sued in connection with the 1998 Omagh bomb, who were jailed after gardaí discovered a major bomb making operation near the border.

The DPP lost his appeal against the 10-year sentence imposed on Joe Fee and the six-year sentence given to Seamus McKenna, who is one of five men being sued by some of the relatives of the victims of the Omagh bomb in a £14m (€20.46m) lawsuit.

The Real IRA bomb attack claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins and injured over 300 others in August, 1998. The relatives civil action is currently “on hold” before the courts in Belfast.

The DPP had appealed against the “undue leniency” of the sentences, but the Court of Criminal Appeal refused the appeal and let the sentences stand.

Fee (aged 42) of Blackstaff, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan and Mc Kenna (aged 51) of Marian Park, Dundalk, Co Louth were jailed by the Special Criminal Court in December 2004 for the possession of an explosive substance with intent to endanger life at Thornfield, Co Louth on June 13th, 2003.

Fee had denied the charge and was convicted after a lengthy trial, while Mc Kenna had pleaded guilty to the charge.

The trial court heard that gardaí found Mc Kenna and another man mixing home made explosives at a remote farm in Co Louth and that 1,200 pounds of the explosive mixture had already been mixed and was in the final stages of completion for a massive bomb.

Fee was arrested after leaving the farmyard and gardaí found more explosives mixture in his van.

Counsel for the DPP Mr Brendan Grehan SC submitted that the trial court had failed to take into account the gravity of the offence, the potential of the explosives to cause injury and destruction, the motivation of those involved and the need for a deterrent sentence.

Mr Grehan said that the quantity of explosives discovered by gardaí would have made the bomb one of the biggest ever made and the court had heard evidence that it would have caused damage for 500 metres from its centre if it had exploded.

Ms Justice Fidelman Macken, presiding at the three judge appeal court, said that the maximum sentence for the offences was life imprisonment which showed the seriousness of the offences. The judge said that the DPP was appealing that the sentences imposed by the Special Criminal Court were “unduly lenient” and the onus was on him to prove that they were and that there had been a departure from the normal appropriate sentences.

The judge said that the court was satisfied that in Fee's case a sentence of 10 years was one that took into account deterrence. She said that the court was not satisfied that the DPP had discharged the burden on him to prove that the sentences were unduly lenient and refused the Director's appeal.