The Garda response to a Youth Defence anti-abortion demonstration in May last year was "completely over the top", counsel for the defendants, Mr Micheal O'Higgins, told the Dublin District Court yesterday. He wondered whether the Garda response would have been quite so vigorous had the demonstration been in support of a "trendier cause".
Before the court were 10 people who took part in the protest outside the Adelaide Hospital on May 16th. They face charges ranging from disorderly behaviour to assault and obstruction of gardai.
Mr O'Higgins said gardai had used excessive force in arresting two of the defendants. He claimed they had deliberately focused their attention on two male demonstrators without due cause.
i was purely for the welfare of the patients inside, they should have found out the facts, he said.
Instead, he claimed, they had decided that they were not going to "tolerate" any opposition. They then went on to take an "arbitrary" decision to arrest the two males, and "unreasonably".
"Such flexing of muscles by the gardai is not good enough", defence counsel said. "If they felt they needed to end the demonstration, they should have asked `When is this thing going to end'?" There were also contradictions in the testimony given by individual gardai about the timing of decisions to arrest certain individuals.
A defence witness, Mr Richard Greene, of Roebuck Road, Dundrum, an independent member of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Council, said he had been involved in many such demonstrations, for example, campaigns in support of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. But he had never witnessed such "over-the-top behaviour" by the police as in the Adelaide Hospital demonstration, he said.
He had been seriously concerned for the welfare of Mr Palen [a defendant], whose head had been hit off the bonnet of a police van at least twice.
Another witness for the defence, Ms Niamh Nic Mhathuna, one of the organisers of the protest, claimed that gardai had used excessive force in arresting another defendant, a Mr Quinn.
The hearing continues today.