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The Senior Counsel defending Riad Bouchaker, who stands accused of the attempted murder of three small children, assault causing serious harm to their carer, assault causing harm in respect of two other young children and a young French man, and production of a 36cm kitchen knife, has delivered his closing arguments.
Counsel, who cannot be identified by order of the court, told the jury of nine men and three women this morning that the defence would not be calling any witnesses.
“I’m straining every sinew to be as accurate and precise, he said, adding, “This is a case perhaps like no other for you, for me as well; it causes you to reflect on things in a grander or broader way.”
He said that the nature of jury trials was “A manifestation that the noise and the half-thinking of modern life can be left outside this building,” so that facts can be examined with “calm” and “intelligence”.
He said that the case had “plainly upended and near destroyed a number of lives” and that “others live with the consequences.”
He said that the fallout had “Set fire to this city, our city,” and that the “City was set on fire perhaps by those who seek to turn us one against another” and “seek to reduce complex issues to binaries.”
He said certain individuals had been “running up and down telephone poles using our national flag as a symbol of division and hate.”
“The issues for you to decide are first, what Riad Bouchaker did that day or what he intended to do,” he said.
“There is no doubt that he armed himself with a knife on that day and did lifelong harm.”
He pointed to the “infinitely brave Leanne Flynn”, and how “There is no doubt that whatever was in his mind was a toxic blend of banal frustrations and inexplicable darkness.”
He said his client’s actions were “Utterly morally abhorrent.”
“First, I say that there is a profound danger that one’s critical faculties may be overwhelmed by horror,” he said.
“This case has been like a tutorial in the limitations and the dangers of eyewitness testimony,” he said, adding that “not a single person came to his court to tell lies” and that “each of them was honest, subjectively, to a fault, Irish and non-Irish as they were,” he said.
He referred to a previous fitness to be tried hearing in respect of the accused, and that the psychiatrists who gave expert evidence therein disagreed on the appropriate outcome, but that Mr Justice Tony Hunt had ruled that the accused was fit to stand trial.
Counsel reiterated that the defence of not guilty by reason of insanity was not available to his client.
He said that Bouchaker had brain surgery in 2021, after which a portion of his skull had to be removed. He said the surgery had led to “cognitive” impairments that were “exacerbated” by what happened on the 23rd of November 2023.
This led to “significant” difficulties with cognition, concentration, decision making, and memory, he said.
He advised the jury that if they were not satisfied that the prosecution had proven its case in respect of all eight charges, they could rule that the accused was not guilty of attempted murder, but guilty of assault causing harm either intentionally or unintentionally.
He said he would “try to avoid nonsense and try to be as direct as I can,” adding that the evidence of the effects of the attack on the most seriously injured child, for which his client faces a charge of attempted murder, was “an entirely distinct category” from the circumstances of the two other children in respect of whom Bouchaker is also charged with attempted murder.
“I’m going to ask you to consider if it is the case that his intent was murderous; then the sickening reality is that in those seconds Leanne Flynn has been cast aside, he would have killed or caused devastating injuries to further children,” he said, adding, “those injuries are not there, and that impact is not there.”
Leanne Flynn “is the only eyewitness who knows the children,” he said, describing her as a “deeply impressive witness” and praising the “unspeakably impressive, restrained tenor of her evidence”.
He said that Ms Flynn had been clear about “What she did see and what she was not sure of” and “she never moved from it”.
He recounted how Flynn said she saw Bouchaker when he was zipping up one of the children’s coats and that it was then that he came towards the most grievously wounded little girl and “as he got closer, he very hurriedly began ferociously stabbing”.
Counsel argued that after his client had stabbed Ms Flynn and gone back at the children with the knife in his hand, he was “swinging the knife”.
“[Name of most seriously injured girl] was the first person he stabbed with the knife,” he said, adding, “when he was waving, he was getting other children” but Ms Flynn was unsure of what type of injuries had been inflicted.
He reflected on asking Ms Flynn if this might have been carried out to cause harm or injury, and her answering that she thought it was to “cause harm because he went back and was swinging it.”
“I’m not in the business of making submissions that I’m not under clear instruction to make,” he said.
He said that Warren Donoghue was “bravely possibly the very first person into the fray” and that it “seems he was the first person to punch Riad Bouchaker into the face and Caio Benecio was at his shoulder.”
With respect to the evidence given by the various prosecution witnesses, he said, human memory is a difficult thing”, adding, “in addition to the manner in which memory works, we bring our personality to evidence giving.”
He recalled how one witness had said, “I’m a very observant person” with a “wide range of vision” before realising that his recollection of the events of that day did not reflect what the CCTV showed.
He pointed to the evidence of another witness who had said, “He was going so fast he was just stabbing”, saying that “no such child received injuries that could accord with this, as it would have been after the attack on the most seriously injured child, who was stabbed into the heart.
“I’m not asking you to thank Riad Bouchaker, but there is not a child who has injuries that accord with that description,” he pressed.
“Once Leanne Flynn was thrown aside, there was nothing to protect the children,” he said, adding, “There was nothing to prevent any or all of those children from being stabbed in as vicious a way as he could be.”
HUMAN MEMORY
He said that Siobhan Kearney had “described the stabbing in violent and vivid terms, but she did not see those things,” but that there was “no doubt she came to tell the truth”.
He argued that human memory was an “honest but misleading stew” of “memory and what people have said.”
He pointed to the testimony of another witness who was coming out of a parent-teacher meeting at the school and said she saw Leanne Flynn getting stabbed, which wasn’t in her Garda statement, which she accepted when the statement was read back to her.
“Three years later, she was confident that she had seen this, but it hadn’t been in her statement. Despite her subjective honesty, it was simply not true,” he said.
“15 different people see 15 different things”, he said, arguing that “memory is fallible to the point of significant danger” and that “some people make themselves the hero of their own recollection.”
He said his client’s apparent impairment is much more severe now than before the attack and that he descended into “gibberish” during his Garda interviews despite “an excellent Arabic interpreter” who said on a number of occasions, “he’s not making any sense”.
Counsel said that his client had said on numerous occasions that he “didn’t intend to kill anybody” and that he “struggles to understand” the Garda caution.
“The manner of treatment of him by Gardaí was impeccable and professional,” he said, adding that his client, “struggles to understand the legal concept of attempt” and is “intellectually unable to understand”.
“His approach to the charges is made clear amid profound confusion and gibberish,” he said, adding that “he states again and again that he never intended to kill anyone.”
He asked the jury to consider whether his client’s actions reached the level of evidence required to constitute attempted murder or whether it was a case of “intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm” with respect to the three children.
“The only injury to [the five-year-old boy who suffered a cut on his neck] was fixed up with Steri-Strips,” he said, adding that the child was able to leave the hospital “in less than an hour”.
He said that while there was no doubt that the injuries inflicted on the two girl was the result of “a knife strike or an attempted knife strike to a child” the cut on the boy’s neck was a “tiny laceration in a different category” and that there was “no evidence that it was with a knife” but could have been due to the “general business of a small child on a playground” and that it had not been proven that “holes in his jacket were consistent with a murderous intent.”
He suggested that the jury was being “asked to join the speculative dots” to reach a conclusion of attempted murder, which his client had “every opportunity to inflict” when Ms Flynn “was not in a position” to protect the children.
He referred to her as “the closest and plainly most reliable witness”.
Referring to the second little girl injured, he said that the “8cm wound to her scalp has to be from the knife”.
He accused prosecuting counsel Carl Finnegan SC of using an “almost Obama-style” tactic when saying, “seven or eight times” about his client, “If he did not intend to harm” etc.
He said that Mr Finnegan had used the word “harm” and not “kill” and that the evidence of the harm done to the boy and girl “falls short”.
DO NOT REGARD HIM “AS SOME MONSTER”
Counsel also argued that there was not sufficient evidence of his client assaulting Alan Guille, the French national who took the knife from him.
“This case will live with me, and with you for a very long time,” he said, adding that it was “something the children and families will live with for the rest of their lives.”
“Do not approach him dismissively” or regard him “as some monster”, he implored, saying that Bouchaker should be viewed as “your impaired brother, friend, husband, or wife.”
“How would you want this case to be judged if a member of your family were on trial?”
“You are here to represent the best parts of us,” he said, adding, “Those who would have us rage and hate: they don’t ask for nuance or calm deliberation; their shrieking is for vengeance.”
“Their shrieking should have no place in these courses,” he said, adding, “You give a profound answer to those people.”
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