The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

The Polish national accused of the attack on Clonmel born NewsTalk researcher Mairead O’Dwyer told Gardai that voices in his head prompted him to attack the 27 year old in Dublin’s inner-city during the weekend.

Lezsek Jarosz (21) told Gardai; “I presume it was because of the voices I heard to get money for drugs.” while he was being interviewed following his arrest.

Jarosz has only been in Ireland for three weeks, and was accompanied in court by his sister.

The accused was arrested by Gardai at the Mill Apartments, Weaver Square, Dublin 8, and taken to Kevin Street Garda Satation on Friday.

In court yesterday, Jarosz was charged with the attack on O’Dwyer as well as two other counts of robbery which occoured on the same date.

The court was told that he admitted to the attack on Ms O’Dwyer and claimed that he was under the influence of hash when he carried out the two robberies.

He was remanded in custody and is due to appear before Cloverhill court on Friday.

Limerick City Council are defending their role in the whole voting mess that became apparant in the election last Thursday.

At least 200 people were denied their vote within the City Council jurisdiction

A spokesperson for the council told Live 95FM that they were happy with amendments with the register and that it would never be perfect..

However, speaking to Today FM’s Matt Cooper last Saturday, outgoing minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea said that he had to concede that the electoral register was a mess.

He told the radio host that his office was “full of messages” from constituents complaining about not being able to vote.

It is believed that as many as 170,000 people lost the right to vote nationwide.

Election candidates speaking to us during last Friday’s count expressed concerns that most of the complaints they received about not being able to vote came from people in “working class” areas.

A couple who attended a wedding in the city on Saturday night leaving their nine month old child in the care of a babysitter, came home on Sunday morning to find that their home on Byrne Avenue in Prospect had been petrol bombed and their child and the babysitter had narrowly escaped death.

The Limerick Leader reports today that Gardai are investigating the attack on the house at 9 Byrne Avenue and are carrying out door-to-door enquiries after the house was completely destroyed by fire.

It is as yet unknown as to what the motive for the attack on the house was.

Willie O’Dea’s surplus votes are stacked before being distributed to other candidates during last Friday’s count in Patrickswell. Picture: limerickblogger.org

Questions are being asked as to why, after Willie ODea received nearly two and a half quotas, he was unable to bring both Fianna Fail candidates in with him, and the finger is being pointed at upstart Eddie Wade.

Wade caused a major internal rumpus within local party circles when Noreen Ryan was selected to stand for election rather than him.

Both Willie O’Dea and Peter Power increased their number of first preference votes, but the number of votes cast for a third Fianna Fial candidate in Limerick East fell by almost 1600 this year. In 2002 Eddie Wade picked up 2918 first preference votes while in 2007, Noreen Ryan picked up only 1931 votes, only overtaking Sinn Fein’s Maurice Quinlivan in later counts.

It is now believed that Wade’s tantrums shortly after the Fianna Fail convention not only cost Noreen Ryan first preference votes, but a chance to be elected.

Cindy Sheehan and Rahul Ahmed accompany peace activists at Shannon Airport. Picture: indymedia

With all the talk of the election, we had nary a minute to cover a visit to Ireland by US peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who landed at Shannon over the weekend.

She arrived on on 23rd May in the company of Ruhal Ahmed, an afghan national who was taken from his home country to Guantanimo Bay in Cuba for the purpose of torture by the Central Intelligience Agency (United States)

From Indymedia.ie

Casey Sheehan passed through Shannon airport on a chartered US troop carrier shortly before he was killed in Iraq. His mother Cindy, instead of quietly morning the loss of her beloved son, decided to stage an anti war protest at US President George W Bush’s ranch in Texas, so that other parents might not suffer similar losses. She has become one of the most persistant and dedicated anti war activist in the United States. However, she is not only concerned at the loss of American lives in Iraq, she is also very concerned at the loss of so many innocent Iraqi lives.

Ruhal Ahmed was arrested in Afghanistan in 2003, bound, gagged and blindfolded, and transported to Guantanamo Bay Prison camp in Cuba on a US military aircraft, probably a Hercules C130 like that photographed above at Shannon today. He has not yet established the exact route of his journey from Afghanistan to Cuba, but there is now a strong likelihood that he may have been transported through Shannon airport. Most of the investigations into the US extraordinary rendition for torture programme have focused only on the use of chartered or CIA executive jets for the transport of the prisoners for torture. However, US military aircraft were also extensively used for prisoner transport especially in 2002 and 2003, and many of these Hercules C130s passed through Shannon airport. I should know, because I was arrested unlawfully for taking a photograph of one at Shannon in 2005.
The evidence that Shannon was used to transport prisoners to and from Guantanamo is growing, and with the release of more prisoners such as Ruhal from Guantanamo proof of the Irish Government’s complicity in crimes of torture will emerge.

Full post at Indymedia.

Cindy Sheehan’s Diary from Shannon

A polish national is due before the district court in Kilmanham in Dublin charged with the stabbing of NewsTalk researcher

Mairead O’Dwyre, from Clonmel in Tipperary, but living in Dublin was on her way home from a night out with friends when she was attacked and stabbed in the neck on Lourdes Road in Dublin’s South Inner City.

Her attacker stabbed her in the shoulder and neck with a six or seven inch blade, one of the lascerations was so dep that there was an exit would on the other side of her neck.

Ms O’Dyer (27) had to undergo hours of life-saving surgery, and remains in a serious condition in hospital.

From BreakingNews.ie

A 14 year old boy from Scarrif in County Clare who went missing over the weekend has been found safe and well in Sligo.

Rubin Jones was reported to have been seen in Galway thumbiung a lift, but was later found by Gardai in Sligo.

If you recall, we mentioned that as part of the ev+a arts festival, and riverfest, the Ringing Limerick presentation took place over the may bank holiday weekend.

The audio file is available here, (mp3 format) and is best listened to through headphones.

There are also plenty of photographs of the event on the Ringing Limerick Website, which can be found here.

As things have been a bit mad with all election posts lately its about time to play catch up with events of a sporting nature that are relevent to Limerick. The rugby season petered out for Munster after the defeat in the Heineken cup but a few solid performances towards the end of the magners league will hopefully be something to build on.. Actually Munster won their last four games to wind up in sixth place. Meanwhile Leinster managed to find that button called self destruct and they wound up blowing their chances to win the league and wound up third behind the winners Neath Swansea Ospreys. Speaking of the Heineken cup all the huffing and puffing about whether the competion was going to exist next year has died down with the announcement last week that the competition will continue next year with the existing top teams from England and France competing as per normal…….
On to soccer now and a bit more up to date, Limerick native Steve Finnan was his usual efficient self in a Liverpool shirt in the champions league final but unfortunately came away with a runners up medal this time as the reds were beaten 2-1 by AC Milan.
After my previous report from Jackman park where unfortunately the boys of Limerick 37 went down to a one nil defeat to league leaders Dundalk, the super blues have recovered well and with a draw or two and more recently two away wins, the team are in third place, five points behind the Drogs and only two behind second place Cobh Ramblers. Wins away to Monaghan by a goal to nil and a two to one victory against Kildare town tonight have set the team up well for a gruelling schedule which sees the blues play three game in the space of a week. Next tuesday, the Wexford youths come to visit Jackman park and kick off is at 7.45pm so show your support and come along to join in a bit of shouting for “les blues”.

The website of outgoing defence minister Willie O’Dea was temporarily off line this morning after it had been defaced by a turkish hacker calling himself Iskorpitz.

The site redirected to a page containing a YouTube delivering it’s message in several languages stating the screen name of the hacker.

With the Mission Impossible music in the background the message “Armanian Fucked, France Fucked, Greece Fucked, PKK Terror” were flashed on the screen.

The defacement did not last long on O’Deas site as repairs were made to it, and it is running normally now.

The Shannon Musical website was defaced, however it would appear that repairs to this site are now underway.

The video can be found here.

Both websites are hosted at myhost.ie.