Engineer avoids jail over beating in Dublin

An Egyptian engineer who says he came to Ireland after his family were killed in a bomb attack has avoided a jail term for beating his flatmate with a belt during a tenancy dispute.

Garda Paul Newport said Mina Fanous, aged 35, had turned up at the apartment he had lived in and told the flatmate he had rights as a tenant before hitting her with the belt.

His defence counsel submitted he had come to Ireland after his wife and child we killed in a bomb in Alexandria, although there was no documentation to prove this.