A young man described as "damaged and dangerous" has been jailed for seven years by Ms Justice Maureen Clark at the Central Criminal Court for raping a woman in Dublin two years ago.
Evidence had been given that he had suffered torture while in his native Eritrea.
Ms Justice Clark backdated the sentence to the time of his arrest 18 months ago and recommended "while in prison, all attempts are made to treat this very damaged refugee with compassion",
Bereket Mekonnen (18) was found guilty by a jury last February of raping the woman (42) in August, 2005.
The jury reached its 10-1 majority guilty verdict after about six hours. A large portion of the hearing was taken up with legal argument in the absence of the jury.
Mekonnen met the victim in a late-night disco-bar where she was in an intoxicated state. She drank some of his wine there before leaving for home and he raped her while she was on her way. He had been granted refugee status in August 2005.
While Ms Justice Clark was reading out the sentence, Mekonnen became agitated and violently slammed some books down on the bench before being restrained by several prison officers who continued to keep a hold on him until the judge ordered that he be given some space.
Ms Justice Clark, who has directed that he be registered as a sex offender, said she would write to the Minister for Justice to inquire about having Mekonnen deported to serve his sentence in Eritrea.
She called him a "damaged, desensitised and potentially dangerous young man" and noted "the profound irony of a man who suffered from torture and then inflicted that pain and degradation on someone else".
Ms Justice Clark had adjourned sentence on several occasions, saying it was "a most unusual case" and that she needed to know as much as possible about why he fled Eritrea and the reasons he gave for fleeing.
She asked Mekonnen's defence counsel, Blaise O'Carroll SC, to discuss with him if he had any interest in returning to Eritrea, considering he was facing the possibility of spending seven years in an Irish prison and his family might be unable to visit him here.
Ms Justice Clark had also reviewed Mekonnen's file from Oifig Choimisinéir Iarratais na dTeifeach - the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner - with the consent of his legal team. On October 26th she said: "I had thought he was a child soldier which wasn't the case but a medical report on his refugee application has shown physical evidence of torture."
She rescheduled the sentence hearing for November 26th but it had to be abandoned when Mekonnen became violent before Ms Justice Clark had arrived on the bench and had to be carried screaming and kicking by prison officers across the Four Courts to a custody cell.
The trouble began after his handcuffs had been removed and he started shouting about the scars he said they left on his wrists. Two prison officers tried to reason with him but within seconds he began lashing out, screaming and kicking and became so aggressive that it eventually took six prison officers to restrain him.
Caroline Biggs, defending, told Ms Justice Clark then that she had spoken to Mekonnen the previous Friday and had seen nothing to be concerned about but "it seems that within 15 minutes of arriving in court he became very agitated".
Ms Justice Clark said she appreciated he had "presented difficulties for the prison officers and was too dangerous to bring to court" and adjourned the case to December 6th when Mekonnen told her he was "sick" of his case and wanted "it finished".