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Nine months detention for two teen burglars

This article is from page 14 of the 2007-12-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG

TWO Slovakian teenagers who bur- gled two houses in Ennis just weeks after arriving in the town have both been sentenced to nine months deten- none

The duo, aged 16 and 17 and who cannot be named because of their ages, burgled one house at Edenvale, Ennis, last August and another in To- bartaoscain.

Detective Garda Brendan Rouine told Ennis District Court this week

that some of the property which was taken from the house in Edenvale had been recovered. However jewellery, valued at €1,500, and $2,000 US dollars had not been recovered.

The court was told that there was no co-operation with gardai in rela- tion to recovering the property which was still outstanding.

Defending solicitor Daragh Hassett said the two would undertake to fly home to Slovakia within days, if the court would agree.

“They would be out of the jurisdic-

tion and out of the concerns of the gardai in this jurisdiction. The pro- posal has gone down somewhat well with the gardai,” said Mr Hassett.

He said one of his clients had spent three weeks in custody and the other has been four weeks in jail and both were “frightened at the thought of go- ing back to prison”.

“Tam applying to release them from custody, pending the flights tickets being produced,’ said the solicitor.

Judge Joseph Mangan said he noted there was no co-operation. He asked

whether either of the accused had previous convictions and was told it would take three months to ascertain this via communication with the Slo- vakian authorities.

The judge said, “This is a very bad system. That might have been fine when we had one person from Slova- kia living in this country. That day is gone.”

Mr Hassett replied, “If previous convictions are not before the court, it should stand before the court as having no convictions. I’d ask you

to treat them as having no previous convictions.”

The judge imposed six-month and three-month detention sentences in St Patrick’s Institution, to run consecu- tively. He fixed a bond in the event of an appeal, on their own bonds of €50 and independent sureties of €4,000, €2,000 of which was to be lodged. He backdated the sentences to the dates they went into custody.

However the accused were unable to take up the bail and were remand- ed in custody.

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