'Love Ulster' rioter gets nine months
A man whose photograph appeared on the front page of a national newspaper the day after the 'Love Ulster' parade "essentially engaged in a tug of war with gardaí" has been sentenced to nine months in prison.
Jonathan Hawthorne (aged 36) of Mount Tallant Avenue, Terenure, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to violent disorder on February 25, 2006. He had four previous convictions for public order and had not come to Garda attention since.
Judge Katherine Delahunt said, after viewing the photographs of Hawthorne, that it was clear that he was "a willing and active participant".
"The photographs put you in the front line of this unprovoked attack on gardaí who were acting in their duty trying to keep the peace and protect innocent people," Judge Delahunt said before she added that as a father of three, Hawthorne should have been aware of what he was doing.
She took into account a letter of apology he had written to the court and the efforts he had taken to rehabilitate from his drug addiction before she said she didn't accept a submission from defence counsel Mr Ronan Kennedy BL that the offence was at the lower end of the scale.
