A 21-YEAR-OLD man has been arrested and charged with assault over an alleged racist attack on three young Afghan men in a South Dublin park last Thursday.
John Connors of Daletree Place, Ballycullen near Knocklyon in Co Dublin was arrested yesterday, and detained at Blackrock Garda Station under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.
This morning, he was charged with assault under Section 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, at Dún Laoghaire District Court.
He has been remanded on bail, and will appear in court again on 26 July.
Afghan brothers Naqeeb and Fazalrahman Ahmadzai (aged 18 and 20) were cycling home from Marlay Park with their nephew Abdul (13) on Broadford Road in Ballinteer on Thursday night.
According to a Garda statement this afternoon, the young men were “assaulted by four other males who were travelling in a car described as a blue coloured Peugeot.”
Following the assault the four males left the scene in the car in the direction of Dundrum.
After the arrest of Connors yesterday, Gardaí are actively looking for the three others alleged to have been with him.
Thirteen-year-old Abdul told RTE Radio’s This Week programme on Sunday that the men got out of their car and began punching him and his uncles in the face.
One of the men, he claimed, hit him with a black metal weapon, and the group directed racial abuse at the Ahmadzai family, telling them to “go back to your own country.”
In response, 200 people gathered last night outside the Nutgrove Shopping Centre in Rathfarnam, in solidarity with the Ahmadzai family, and to protest against racism in the community.
AAA/PBP TD Bríd Smith addressed the crowd, saying:
[It’s really important that the communities respond, not the police, not the politicians.
Otherwise it becomes acceptable, to beat up a few guys on the way home from the park, because nobody said anything, because nobody did anything about it.
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