A DERRY solicitor Manmohand ‘Johnny’ Sandhu, has been jailed for 10 years for inciting loyalist terrorists to murder an already wounded taxi driver.
The charges said that he used his position as a solicitor to keep terrorists informed of police investigations into their activities.
Belfast Crown Court judge Mr Justice Deeny told Sandhu (44) of Colby Avenue, Derry, that what he had done was a “wicked thing” and instead of acting as a solicitor appeared to be a member of the terrorist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang.
However, the judge said that while Sandhu’s conduct was “deserving of a severe sentence”, he was entitled under law to credit in a reduced sentence for his guilty pleas and the delay of over 3½ years in bringing him to trial and the fact that no harm came to anyone despite his actions.
Sandhu had been secretly recorded at the PSNI serious crime suite at Antrim Police Station between June 2005 and February 2006 as he coached UVF terror suspects, told them of police investigations and on one occasion inciting murder.
Mr Justice Deeny said Sandhu’s actions were not committed “on a single occasion”, but rather, “they show a pattern on the part of the accused”. He said “the needs of an orderly and civilised society” demanded that those charged of serious crimes should be able to have legal advice.
However, what Sandhu had done was “a pernicious and dangerous abuse of that right”, because he’d gone beyond “the role of legal adviser” which was “a grave breach of trust”.
Mr Justice Deeny said that “frequently during these interviews he is recorded keeping persons who are clearly members of a terrorist organisation, the UVF, informed of the progress of police investigations into very serious crimes.”
“In doing so he is of course assisting them in tending to inhibit the effective investigation and solution of such offences”.
Mr Justice Deeny quoted from portions of the secretly taped interviews Sandhu had with clients in which he commented that “dead men can’t talk” and had said of the original murder-bid that he had “never seen an operation go pear shaped like this before”.
Mr Justice Deeny said in Sandhu’s case there were two aggraviting features, “firstly there is a grave breach of trust by the accused as a solicitor to the Supreme Court of Northern Ireland . . . and secondly, that abuse of trust took place not on a single occasion but on a number of occasions”. However, he added there were a number of mitigation factors in his favour, not least, “despite the encouragement given by the accused”, it was never acted upon and no one was ever injured as a result.
Sandhu was jailed for 10 years for incitement to murder and given four-concurrent terms of three years each for doing an act to pervert the course of public justice and conspiring to do so.