The Court of Criminal Appeal has varied prison sentences imposed last year on a serial rapist who assaulted three women in vicious attacks in Dublin.
Stating that it was necessary to reflect the court and society's abhorrence of the assaults by Salman Aslam Dar, the three judge appeal court ruled that the effective five-year sentences imposed on each count to run consecutively, making a total of 15 years, was inadequate.
It instead directed that sentences of 10, 12 and 15 years be imposed on all three counts, to run concurrently, and also resulting in a total 15-year sentence.
At the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Paul Carney had sentenced Dar (25), a computer science student from Lahore, Pakistan, to three consecutive prison sentences of seven years, with the final two years of each term suspended, after he pleaded guilty to the attacks between February and June 2004 in Dublin city, making a total of 15 years' imprisonment.
Yesterday, the three judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal, on an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions, varied the sentences by sentencing Dar to 10 years' imprisonment for the first attack, 12 years for the second attack and 15 years for the third rape. It ordered all sentences to run concurrently from June 8th, 2004, meaning Dar will serve a total of 15 years.
Explaining the reason for varying the sentences, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, presiding, said that, taken individually the sentence for each offence imposed - effectively five years on each count - was inadequate.
He said the court would have been tempted to increase the sentences but for the fact that Dar's counsel Mr Felix McEnroy SC had given an unqualified undertaking that his client would return to Pakistan when his term of imprisonment was over.
It was necessary to recognise the horrific nature of the assaults and to reflect the abhorrence of the court and all members of society at the offences, he said.
"All three of these victims were horrifically damaged as a result of these vicious assaults of the worst kind imaginable," the judge said.
Dar, who had an address at Abbey View, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, had separately attacked three women, a Mexican, a Polish woman and an Irish woman, all in their 20s, as they walked home alone in the early hours.