A 40-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of the murder of Adil Essalhi in Dublin last year.
Mr Essalhi (31), a father-of-five, died after suffering a violent assault during which he was struck almost 60 times in the head, neck and arms with a machete-type weapon and a knife.
His burnt and bleached body was found partly submerged in a drain a week later by gardai who had been directed to its location in a cornfield by his killer Wayne Kinsella.
Kinsella, with an address at The Plaza, Tyrrelstown, but who is originally from Finglas, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Essalhi in fields behind the Plaza in Tyrrelstown, Blanchardstown, on January 6th, 2011.
The Central Criminal Court jury of seven women and five men took two hours and 38 minutes to reach their unanimous verdict of guilty of murder following the two-week trial.
Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan thanked the jury before excusing them from further service for a period of five years.
When the judge told Kinsella he was handing down the mandatory penalty of life imprisonment he replied: "I want to appeal that as well, your honour".
The court heard Kinsella has 39 previous convictions, including one for manslaughter for which he received an eight-year sentence.
The jury accepted the prosecution's case that Kinsella and a relative lured Mr Essalhi to a field behind the Plaza apartments and murdered him having "got it in to their heads" he was involved in the death of Wayne Kinsella's brother Lee.
But speaking outside the court, the victim's mother Geraldine Essalhi denied that her son had anything to do with Lee Kinsella's death.
"A load of lies. My Adil wouldn't hurt a fly and that was proven in court and thank God he's away where he will never do what he did to my child to any other child again in his life," she said. "Thank God that justice was done and my son is at rest at the moment. We all got a life sentence as well and thank God we have God on our side."
Karen Boylan, Mr Essalhi's partner and mother of two of his five children, gave birth to their youngest daughter after his death, the court heard.
In the days after Mr Essalhi's disappearance, Kinsella voluntarily sat in to a Garda patrol car and told two detectives that he could direct them to where the body of a missing person had been dumped in a field in Tyrrelstown.
The jury heard that Kinsella behaved in an "eccentric" manner and told two detectives that if they were to find the bleached and burned body of the killer of his brother Lee, they could "come looking" for him.
Sgt Ann Ellis testified that on the following day she walked "arm in arm" with Kinsella up to a balcony on the Plaza apartment complex in Tyrrelstown after he told her: "Walk with me and I'll point to where the body is."
The court heard that gardai subsequently found the body of Mr Essalhi close to where Kinsella had pointed to in a distant cornfield and said: "The body is to the left of there in a woody area, a wood. I think it's a bit burned, that's what I was told anyway."
The jury also viewed camcorder footage of a handcuffed Kinsella directing gardaí to dig under a group of rocks where he said clothing that had belonged to the deceased man was buried.
There was DNA evidence that blood on a hooded top dug up by gardaí belonged to Mr Essalhi, while gardai also uncovered a machete with a wooden handle about 100 metres from where the body of the deceased was found.
State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy gave evidence the victim suffered 19 chop wounds to the head, which wounded his soft tissue and fractured his skull, forehead and jaw. She said there was a cluster of six slash wounds to the left side of the neck, one of which had severed the carotid artery.
In his closing speech, counsel for the prosecution Alex Owens SC urged the jury to regard the actions of Wayne Kinsella in directing gardaí to the location of the body of Adel Essalhi as the "conduct of a manipulator" trying to "fool the gardaí" that he was an informant in relation to other people involved in the alleged murder when he was involved himself.
Michael O'Higgins SC, for the defence, pointed to the lack of any forensic link between the alleged crime and the accused man.
The court heard that no charge as of yet has been laid against Wayne Kinsella's relative.