Accused’s iPhone shows him at top functions

A Chinese peasant farmer’s son, who claims he was brutally trafficked into Ireland, was pictured on his €500 iPhone eating crab and drinking red wine at a function in Dublin, the High Court has heard.

The 36-year-old man, who cannot be named for his own safety, has been charged with drugs offences following a raid on a Dublin city centre cannabis growhouse. He faces trial next March.

He claims he was locked into the house in Henrietta St, Dublin, to water plants he did not realise were cannabis plants, until he was arrested by gardaí in Nov 2012.

Kieran Kelly, counsel for the State, told the court that inconsistencies in the man’s evidence suggested he was an economic migrant and not a victim of trafficking.

Feargal Kavanagh, counsel for the accused, told the court at a habeas corpus application for his release on grounds that his detention was unlawful, that the State was failing in its legal obligations to trafficking victims by prosecuting them for offences carried out under duress.

The man told the court he was forced by ‘snakeheads’ — Chinese gangs that smuggle people across state borders — to work as a farmhand in the growhouse.

From Fu Jian province, the man is challenging the lawfulness of his detention pending his trial. Mr Kavanagh said European law provided for the possibility of not imposing penalties on victims of trafficking if they had been forced to carry out crimes.

The Chinese man, who cannot speak English, claimed through an interpreter that he had been forced to work in the growhouse to repay a debt owed by his family in China. He had no idea the plants were cannabis herb or that they were illegal.

His family had borrowed the equivalent of €20,000 in 2011, and when his father could not repay it, the family was physically threatened and death threats were made, the court heard.

Ultimately, a group of men arrived at his house in China and told him that unless he travelled abroad to repay the debt, people would die.

For several months, he was trafficked over land and by about five flights from Hong Kong to Ireland, where he initially worked in Chinese restaurants. Most of his pay had been taken to repay the family debt.

He told Mr Kelly he had bought a second-hand laptop and the iPhone 4 from his employers in the restaurants, who deducted money from what was left of his wages.

Mr Kelly yesterday cross-examined the man about his iPhone photo bank, which included a visit to a Jurys Inn hotel in Galway, and meals, including crab and wine, with people in Dublin.

The court heard the man also had photographs of the visit of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to Ireland on his phone. The Article 40 application for his release, adjourned until Wednesday, is being heard by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan.