Gardaí have returned a man being held for questioning over the murder of an inmate in Mountjoy Prison back to the jail.
The 23-year-old man from Coolock, Dublin was arrested at the prison yesterday afternoon and taken to Mountjoy Garda Station for questioning. He was released this morning without charge.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell
Gary Douch (21) from Tallaght, was beaten to death in a protection cell in the basement of the prison.
Douch was placed in the cell on Monday night after asking for protection. There were a total of seven men in the cell overnight. Douch was found dead at 6.30am yesterday morning when prison officers opened the cell.
Three separate inquiries into the prison murder are under way. These are being conducted by gardaí, prison staff and former senior civil servant Michael Mellett. He was appointed by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, to carry out the independent inquiry.
Speaking in Limerick today Mr McDowell expressed his shock at the manner in which Gary Douch had died and offered his sympathy to the Douch family.
"It is a desperate and appalling thing to have happened to that young man. There are number very distrurbing features to it and we have to get to the bottom of this and find out what went wrong and make sure as far as we can nothing like this ever happens again," he said.
The Minister is anxious that the independent inquiry be dealt with rapidly. The question of Mr Douch's supervision by prison staff will be one of the issues examined.
"If some of the reports are true that this incident took over an hour then obviously there's an issue in relation to supervision," he said.
The man arrested has spent time in a number of jails in recent times. He had also recently been assessed at the Central Mental Hospital before being returned to Cloverhill last week. He had been transferred to Mountjoy on Sunday.