At the Special Criminal Court in Dublin on 29 November, senior counsel for Gerard Hutch argued that Irish surveillance legislation contains no provision permitting the operation of listening devices beyond the State's borders. Brendan Grehan submitted that if the Oireachtas had intended such extraterritorial scope, it would have stated this with explicit clarity in the Act. The dispute concerns recordings captured by a garda bugging device placed on a vehicle belonging to Jonathan Dowdall that travelled to Northern Ireland on 7 March 2016. The prosecution contends the device's location is immaterial once it was lawfully deployed and retrieved within the jurisdiction. Mr Grehan contended the Act was unlawfully operated when the device functioned outside Irish territory and that the recorded conversations should be inadmissible. The three-judge court reserved judgment to Friday on the admissibility issue. Mr Hutch, aged 59, denies murdering David Byrne at the Regency Hotel on 5 February 2016.
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Original report plus public source leads and related archive reports used for review context.
Public source leads
- Gerry 'The Monk' charged with 2016 murder of David Byrne at Regency Hotel - Irish Examiner Irish Examiner · Wed, 29 Sep 2021 07:00:00 GMT
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