Protestor recalls 'Reclaim the Streets' day for court
A member of An Garda Síochana has gone on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court charged with assault causing harm to a protestor at the 2002 ‘Reclaim the Streets’ march on Dame Street.
Garda Paul Tallon of Mountjoy Station, Dublin has pleaded not guilty to assaulting Mr Fergal Leddy causing him harm on May 6, 2002.
The jury has been told by prosecuting counsel, Mr Thomas O’Connell SC (with Bernard Condon BL) that the witnesses will include two senior members of An Garda Síochana who would be giving evidence that it was Gda Tallon captured on video evidence hitting Mr Leddy.
Mr Leddy (aged 34), of Richmond Hill, Rathmines told the jury of six men and six women that someone hit him on the crown of his head with a baton as he was trying to assist a fellow protestor whom he said "one garda seemed to be strangling".
Mr Leddy, who described the ‘Reclaim the Streets’ march as a protest to "express dissatisfaction with planning issues in the city in relation to traffic" and other such matters, said gardaí became more aggressive as "the temperature of the situation rose" on Dame Street near Central Bank.
He said the protestor to whose aid he went was shouting to be let go and the garda was not responding. He said he first appealed verbally to the garda who was holding the protestor but when that did not have any affect he tried to come between the two of them.
"The next thing I was aware of was that I was on the ground and there were blows raining on me," Mr Leddy told prosecuting counsel, Mr O’Connell.
He said he shouted that he was not resisting and within a minute or two he was back in the crowd, his head bleeding profusely from the back of his head. He had been hit on the back of his head and his shoulder.
Mr Leddy said his head, which had been cut at the back from the blow, was very sore and the bleeding did not stop until some time afterwards. He also suffered from headaches for a few weeks after the attack.
He said he would be "very hard put" to describe the garda whom he saw hitting him when he was lying on the ground because he had his head in his hands and only caught glimpses of him.
Mr O’Connell told the jury in his opening address that the central issue upon which it would have to make a decision would be visual identification. It would be shown videos of the protest from two different sources - aerial footage taken by garda helicopters and videos taken by a man whose footage was later shown on TV3.
The jury will be shown a compilation of the footage and what they would have to make up their minds about would be whether the man seen hitting Mr Leddy on the back of his head was Gda Tallon or not.
Mr Leddy can be seen in the video with his bicycle and one of the organisers of the protest, Mr Aidan Corcoran, who would later be giving evidence, is also seen in the film.
Mr O’Connell said Mr Corcoran would be easy to spot as he was wearing "a bizarre" costume which included swimming trunks and leather straps.
The trial is expected to continue for three to four days before Judge Yvonne Murphy.
