Second guilty verdict in Lunney trial

Alan O'Brien has been found guilty of the false imprisonment and assault of Quinn Industrial Holdings director Kevin Lunney.

O'Brien denied the charges but the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court today (Monday) found that the prosecution had proven beyond reasonable doubt that he was one of the three men who abducted Mr Lunney from near his home and assaulted him in a horse box at a yard in Drumbrade, Co Cavan.

O'Brien is the second man to be convicted of Mr Lunney's false imprisonment and assault following the court's earlier verdict of guilty regarding the accused man known as YZ.

O'Brien went on trial with three co-accused: Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3; a 40-year-old man who can't be named known as YZ, and Luke O’Reilly (68), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan. All pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17, 2019.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, sitting with Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge David McHugh, is continuing to deliver the court's judgement relating to Darren Redmond and Luke O'Reilly.

Mr Lunney told the trial that he was bundled into the boot of a car 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 in Ireland and Northern Ireland. His attackers stripped him to his boxer shorts, doused him in bleach, broke his shin 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 in Co Cavan where he was discovered by a man driving a tractor.

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