The Kevin Lunney abduction trial will open tomorrow after a legal challenge to the non-jury Special Criminal Court’s jurisdiction to hear it, was unsuccessful.
Four men are accused of falsely imprisoning and seriously assaulting the director of Quinn Industrial Holdings in September 2019.
This trial was due to open yesterday, but before the accused men were arraigned, one of their barristers indicated his intention to bring a legal challenge.
Michael O’Higgins claimed today that the Special Criminal Court didn’t have the jurisdiction to hear his client’s case.
He raised concerns about the status of the non-jury court, claiming it was supposed to be a temporary structure, set up by temporary emergency legislation, but that it had since morphed into a permanent court.
He argued that if the court was no longer temporary, then it had no jurisdiction here.
Through what he described as an “ad hoc system, growing organically,” he said the court had now crossed a line where it’s existence exceeded the law which set it up.
However, the judges disagreed. Mr Justice Tony Hunt didn’t see any issue with its jurisdiction to hear the trial and he said they couldn’t enter the “political thicket”.
