Derry solicitor jailed for inciting murder

A solicitor caught inciting murder when police bugged his conversations with a suspected terrorist client inside a police station was jailed for 10 years today.

Manmohan “Johnny” Sandhu, 44, from Colby Street, Derry, had changed his plea to guilty of inciting loyalist paramilitaries for murder on the third day of his trial last week.

The Indian-born lawyer also pleaded guilty to three counts of perverting the course of justice and another of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

He was given three years on each count, to run concurrently with a ten-year sentence.

The lawyer stood head bowed in the dock at Belfast Crown Court when the Judge Mr Justice Deeny told him: “It was a wicked thing to incite men of violence to murder an innocent man.

“This was all the more so when you were a solicitor and he was already a victim and a potential witness in a forthcoming trial.

“Such conduct must be deserving of a severe sentence.”