TWO MEN have been sentenced to 12 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a drug addict in Galway over a €2,000 debt.
Aurelijus Zrielskis (37) and Gintautas Bagdonas (32) beat their victim with a sledgehammer, urinated on him and put a metal rod in his anus. The investigating garda told the court that it was “the most horrendous assault” he has seen in his 28 years on the force.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Insp Michael Coppinger said. “I’ve never seen this type of violence visited on another human. It went on for between 30 minutes and an hour but I can only imagine that it felt like a lifetime.”
After the assault the men fled while their victim walked a short distance before being found by a farmer. He was treated for life-threatening injuries and nearly had to have his arms amputated.
“These gentlemen are thoroughly unpleasant, bad people,” Judge Desmond Hogan commented. “They carried out a sinister, premeditated, degrading and sadistic attack to enforce their authority through fear in the murky drug underworld from which they crawled.”
He said both men were equally responsible for the attack and they did it to send a warning to other drug users to pay their debts. The judge also commended the victim for “sticking to his guns” and ensuring “these bully boy tactics are dealt with by the courts”.
He imposed a 12-year sentence on each of the men. He suspended the last two years of Zrielskis’s term and the last three years of Bagdonas’s term because of admissions to gardaí.
Zrielskis of Cois Chlair, Claregalway, and Bagdonas from Clan House, Dominick Street, Galway, had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to causing serious harm and false imprisonment at an outhouse at Francis Cottage, Menlo in Galway on May 25, 2010. During their trial in March they both entered guilty pleas to the lesser charge of assault causing harm as well as false imprisonment. This was accepted by the State.
Insp Coppinger told prosecuting counsel Róisín Lacey that the victim, an Estonian, was a heroin addict and had run up a €2,200 drug debt with the pair. They ordered him to sell heroin to pay them back, threatening to break his fingers if he refused.
Initially the victim agreed to sell the drugs but then changed his mind. Shortly afterwards he met an acquaintance in Galway city. They drove for a short distance before picking up Zrielskis and Bagdonas.