TWO MEN have been jailed for an attack in which an English couple were severely assaulted before their campervan was stolen and burned out just hours after they had arrived in Ireland for a holiday.
The Lincolnshire couple, James Fordyce (61) and his wife Kath (56), were beaten by the men, who were armed with a machete.
Ms Fordyce suffered a fractured skull and broken ribs while her husband sustained a broken leg and required plastic surgery for a number of other wounds.
Sentencing the men yesterday at Newry Crown Court, Judge Randal McKay QC described the attack as "vicious and brutal".
At the time of the incident in June of last year, the then minister for foreign affairs Dermot Ahern expressed concern the matter was so serious he feared it might damage tourism in the area.
It took place in a layby at a former Customs post at 4am on June 11th, 2007 just south of the Border and just inside Mr Ahern's Louth constituency.
Mr Ahern described the attack as "savage and mindless".
"How anyone could carry out such a senseless act on a middle-aged couple is beyond me," he said at the time.
He added the attack bore all the hallmarks of other carjackings at the time in which the crime was committed one side of the Border with the perpetrators immediately fleeing to the other side of the Border.
The couple were taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda after their ordeal.
They lost all of their belongings in the attack.
The men jailed yesterday were Elias Boswell (21) of no fixed abode and Patrick Mongan, White Rise, Dunmurry, outside Belfast.
Both men pleaded guilty to wounding and inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, and also to hijacking and setting fire to their Fiat campervan.
Boswell pleaded guilty to further charges of dangerous driving, failing to provide a specimen and having no insurance while Mongan also pleaded guilty to four counts of assaulting police.
Boswell was jailed for 7½ years while Mongan was jailed for nine years.
The court heard that the couple, from Skegness in Lincolnshire, had travelled to Northern Ireland from Scotland on a week's holiday and had parked in a layby, just over the Border in Co Louth.
Prosecuting QC Liam McCollum said the couple were woken from their sleep in the early hours by "banging and shouting".
When Mr Fordyce opened the door, he was attacked with a machete before he and his wife were "slung out" from the campervan.
Ms Fordyce was punched to the ground, said Mr McCollum, where she was kicked about the head and ribs and both she and her husband were knocked unconscious.
When they awoke they found their campervan had been stolen.
It was later found burned out on the Drumintee Road in Meigh, south Armagh.
Boswell and Mongan were arrested at a police checkpoint driving a Volkswagen Passat.
The men drove through the checkpoint and then assaulted four members of the PSNI as they tried to arrest them.
Defence lawyers for the two men said both were remorseful and regretted their actions and that each of their respective families had managed to scrape together £10,000 to give to the Fordyces by way of apology and compensation.
Handing down the jail terms after the pair agreed to spend a further two years each on probation, Judge McKay told them they had pleaded guilty to "dreadful offences" but he added that he believed probation had a role to play.