The High Court found that Gehan Massoud was unlawfully held in Garda custody after being re-arrested for false pretences but later charged with conspiracy to defraud. The court did not make a final order in the judgment: it said it would hear submissions on the appropriate order.
Massoud had sought judicial review to prohibit Judge Ann Watkins from dealing with the prosecution. The only ground pursued was that her second arrest on 4 November 2003 was unlawful. The court allowed her to amend her grounds to include that argument; it did not determine the other grounds originally raised about District Court jurisdiction.
Massoud and her husband were first arrested at their home in County Meath and detained at Swords Garda Station under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984. At 9.13pm, after she was released from that detention, she was re-arrested. Detective Sergeant Declan Daly said he arrested her so she could be charged with obtaining by false pretences. The judge rejected her separate contention that she had never genuinely been released from her first detention, accepting Daly’s evidence and finding the first ground had no merit.
Massoud remained in a cell until 11.30pm, when she was charged with conspiracy to defraud. The explanation given for the delay was a problem with the station’s pulse charging system. The charge alleged that, with her husband, she conspired to defraud Abbey National Group Limited, formerly Scottish Provident Ireland Limited, between 25 September 2001 and 28 March 2002. Those were allegations in the charge, not findings about the alleged fraud.
The judge held that section 10(2) allowed a person previously detained and released under section 4 to be arrested for an offence for the purpose of charging them with that offence “forthwith”. In the court’s view, once Massoud had been re-arrested for false pretences, she had to be charged with that offence. When the decision was instead made to charge her only with conspiracy to defraud, the purpose of the second arrest was not fulfilled. The judge concluded that her custody was unlawful and breached her constitutional right to liberty.
The judgment ends by stating that submissions would be heard on the appropriate order. It does not record what order was ultimately made or the later course of the prosecution.