Riad Bouchaker, the man convicted of attempting to murder three young children in Dublin city, is unlikely to ever be admitted to the general prison population and could spend his sentence in 23-hour lock-up, in a regime known as protection.
The Irish Times has learned if he is judged to be a danger or himself, because of his brain injury, or at very high risk of being attacked by other prisoners, he will be locked away from the prison population.
The 52-year-old naturalised Irish citizen, originally from Algeria, is currently on the D2 landing in Cloverhill Prison, Dublin and is expected to remain there until he is sentenced in October.
The D2 landing is known as “the waiting room” because of the high proportion of prisoners who go there before being transferred to the Central Mental Hospital (CMH).
READ MORE
However, Bouchaker was deemed fit to stand trial, despite undergoing an operation to have a tumour removed from his head and also suffering a brain injury.
If he is sentenced to a term of imprisonment, rather than to the CMH, as expected, he could only be later transferred to the CMH if National Forensic Mental Health medics in Cloverhill recommended such a move.
But prison sources said it was more likely he would remain in the prison system, where he would be deemed as being of very high risk of being attacked because of the nature of his crimes and the riots they provoked across Dublin.
Because of that threat to him, which sources said would endure in the prison setting, special arrangements will have to be made for him. As well as the option of 23-hour lock-up, he could be housed alongside sex offenders in the Midlands Prison, or even among some of the sex offenders at a segregated section of Mountjoy Prison.
The Irish Prison Service said it could not comment on individual cases.
However, a prison source said he would never mix in the general population no matter the duration of his sentence.
“He’s the type of guy who wouldn’t have the wherewithal to manage himself and he’d be under threat from all angles. He’s not a guy who’d blend in, nobody will forget who he is.”
On Wednesday, he was found guilty by unanimous jury verdict at the Central Criminal Court of the attempted murder of three young children at Dublin’s Parnell Square in November 2023.
He was also found guilty of five other related offences, including intentionally inflicting serious harm on childcare worker Leanne Flynn. She suffered serious injuries after he stabbed her as she tried to protect the children.
The jury returned with its unanimous verdicts after deliberating for more than four hours.
