Syrian man who 'lost' passport on flight to Dublin jailed

Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) officers arrested Mr Maruan at Terminal 2 on Friday night. File picture

A Syrian man arrested at Dublin Airport after he "lost" his passport on a flight from Luxembourg has been jailed for two months.

Dublin District Court heard that Ramzi Maruan, 31, came to Ireland for a better life, but gardaí established he had previously turned up in Iceland and sought international protection in Bulgaria before coming here.

Judge Treasa Kelly said she was sure he had identity documents or a passport when he boarded the plane in Luxembourg, but he had them no longer, and he was not the first man to do this.

Sentencing, she said: "There has to be a deterrent; people cannot come into the country without their ID in those situations where they had ID leaving, and it seems they have lost it in the meantime".

He pleaded guilty on Saturday to breaching the Immigration Act.

Two other men from Albania and Somalia were also accused of similar offences and were denied bail by Judge Kelly over the weekend. The court provided translators in each case.

Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) officers arrested Mr Maruan at Terminal 2 on Friday night, and he made no reply to the charge of having no passport when he landed in the State.

The offence carries a possible 12-month sentence.

They were the latest cases that have seen dozens of non-EU Nationals before the District Courts in Dublin over recent weeks for the same category of offence. On Thursday, another case heard that the GNIB had, at that stage, arrested 37 people at arrivals.

A garda witness said Maruan arrived without documents.

His solicitor, Edward Bradbury, told the court that up until about two weeks ago, he had clients arrive in similar circumstances, and they went into the asylum process.

But Maruan, who has also applied for asylum, has been charged, said Mr Bradbury. He conceded that his client had "inverted commas lost his passport" but was pleading guilty.

Judge Kelly noted the claims he mislaid it during his flight from Luxembourg.

The GNIB had no proof of his identity, and "what is before the court is information he [the accused] has provided".

The defence acknowledged the court was in a difficult situation because the legislation allowed the accused to plead guilty at their first appearance.

Mr Bradbury said Maruan was seeking a better life and was criminalised for looking for asylum.

However, during a break in the hearing, the GNIB learned that he had been in Bulgaria, and there was a record of him before coming to Ireland via Iceland.

The defence also instructed barrister Kevin McCrave, who asked the judge to note that Maruan was the first among the recent GNIB arrests at the airport to consent to having his fingerprints taken.

Ahmed Dahir, 20, from Somalia, and Albanian national Emmanuel Kodaci, 20, were also charged with breaching immigration laws by arriving at Dublin Airport without identification.

They were refused bail on his charges and will appear at Cloverhill District Court on Friday.

The court heard the GNIB arrested Mr Dahir at Terminal 2 after he took a "circuitous route to Ireland, on a flight from Reykjavik, Iceland. He had previously been in Sweden and allegedly used Swedish ID documents.

Gardaí have yet to establish whether they were genuine or fake or if he had applied for asylum in another European country.

The court heard that Mr Kodaci flew in from Brussels on Saturday and showed officials a photo of identification on his phone.

Referring to the Dublin convention, the EU rules about which country should assess applications for international protection, Judge Kelly asked if he had applied for asylum in the first safe country.

The court heard that when Mr Kodaci spoke to people in Brussels, "he understood it was a very dangerous city".