A senior dissident republican arrested as part of a garda investigation into drug debt intimidation has been jailed for six-and-a-half years.
Fifty-three-year-old Dominic Dynes, a Real IRA member, with an address at Lisduff, Castleblayney in Co Monaghan, has previous convictions for firearms offences and assaulting a police officer in 1996.
A second man, 47-year-old Alan Fitzsimons, from James McCormack Gardens, Sutton in Dublin, was jailed for more than four-and-a-half years. He has no previous convictions.
Both were targeted by gardaí in north Dublin under operation Fógra, set up to combat drug related intimidation which gardaí say is a major source of community harm and fear in Dublin and a sinister motive for various forms of criminality.
They were caught over three years ago taking money from the father of a man who became the target of an organised crime group.
The victim’s son had previously been recruited to collect cash raised from a money laundering operation on behalf of a criminal organisation.
However, he got into trouble after he kept some of the cash rather than hand it over.
In November 2021 the son told his father he was in “big trouble over a debt”.
The same evening Dynes and Fitzsimons called to his home looking for his son.
They told him that his son owed a lot of money to dangerous people and that it was better for him that they were calling to his door rather than someone else.
Dynes and Fitzsimons demanded €100,000 from the man but he told them he had no money because his son had “cleaned” them out.
The victim later told gardaí that Fitzsimons was less threatening than Dynes and although he acknowledged that neither of the men were violent towards him, there was a “suggestion” made by the men that there was “a €60,000 price tag” on his son.
The man eventually paid €41,000 and even though his son left the country, the demands for more money kept coming.
Gardaí set up a surveillance operation and watched Dynes and Fitzsimons call to the man’s house on 16 November 2021 and collect €3,000.
Sergeant Donal O’Connell said when the men drove off they were stopped by the gardaí.
Fitzsimons told them the €3,000 was from the sale of a car.
Another €4,830 in cash was found in a follow-up search of Dynes’ home.
Both were arrested and charged and pleaded guilty to demanding money with menaces.
Judge Martin Nolan described it in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court as “a frightening situation” for the victim and set a headline sentence of ten years before jailing Dynes for six-and-a-half years and Fitzsimons for four years and ten months.
