Judge imposes three-year sentence on Sabouni Abdelhamid for document offences

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Judge Orla Crowe imposed a three-year prison sentence on Sabouni Abdelhamid at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after he pleaded guilty to offences involving a false Irish passport card, false passport application documents and a UK driving licence.

Abdelhamid, 33, of Finchley Road in London, admitted possessing a false instrument — an Irish passport card — at Dublin Airport on September 3rd, 2025. He also pleaded guilty to supplying false and misleading documentation for the passport application and having a UK driving licence that was a false instrument.

He had applied online for the passport in December 2023, claiming that his mother was Catherine Corridan, an Irish woman murdered in London in the 1980s. His application included a French identity document and a utility bill. Detective Garda Paul Kane said there was no record that Corridan had children.

Authorities in Brussels retained his Irish passport after their system flagged issues, but let him travel to Dublin with the passport card and driving licence. Irish authorities had been alerted and stopped him on arrival. His fingerprints connected him to five aliases and different dates of birth. The court heard that he had a previous conviction under an alias for a similar offence.

Defence counsel Dean Kelly suggested that obtaining the passport had been unusually easy, an argument Kane rejected. Judge Orla Crowe said the offences involved considerable sophistication, including impersonating a real person and using a deceased person’s identity.

The judge assessed a starting sentence of six years before reducing it to three, taking account of his guilty pleas and how well he was using his time in custody. She backdated the sentence to September 2025, when he was first remanded in custody.