A Chinese man considered a threat to public order was yesterday ordered to be detained after a court heard he was allegedly involved in robbery and threats to kill a fellow countryman.
Mr Liu Chang (26), no fixed abode, contested a Garda application seeking to detain him after he was arrested in a Dublin shopping centre having been spotted by his alleged victim.
The victim, a registered Chinese student, told Dublin District Court that he placed an advertisement last June seeking people to share a house in Killester.
On July 1st, he received a phone call and met with three people, including Mr Chang, in the city-centre. They took a taxi to the victim's house where after looking around, the three men produced knives.
They told him to get them €5,000 "or they would kill me and throw me into a hole in the garden".
They took his bank card and forced him to give them his PIN number. Later, €700 was taken from his account. They also took a laptop computer and a digital camera.
Four months later, the victim was at work in St Stephen's Green shopping centre, Dublin, when he saw Mr Chang. He followed him while a colleague called security.
Initially Mr Chang denied having ever met the victim but later offered to get his money and property back saying he did not want to be sent back to China.
Mr Peter Connolly, defending, said Mr Chang was applying for refugee status, had no previous convictions and should not be detained as he was entitled to the presumption of innocence until he is convicted of an offence.
Judge Gerard Haughton said while the District Court had to vindicate the Constitutional rights of people before it, this was only where the superior courts had determined the constitutionality of the law in any particular case.
This particular section (9) of the 1996 Refugee Act, under which the detention application was made, had not been challenged but it was open to the defence to do so or to appeal any decision of the District Court to the High Court.
On the basis of the evidence before him, Judge Haughton was satisfied there were reasonable grounds to detain Mr Chang.
Judge Haughton ordered that he be detained at Cloverhill prison until February 5th.