Rafik Ben Salah jailed for attempting to escape custody

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

Rafik Ben Salah was sentenced to eight months in prison at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, having pleaded guilty to attempting to escape garda custody while being extradited to Spain. Judge Elma Sheahan imposed the sentence, backdated to when he went into custody earlier that year. The proceedings were reported on 15 December 2023.

The offence occurred during an extradition attempt on 9 December 2022, when Salah broke loose at Dublin Airport and was detained after a pursuit. A second attempt on 22 December 2022 failed after the flight captain refused to let him board, and the extradition warrant was withdrawn.

The defence said Salah came to Europe for work and was acting out of desperation to remain in Ireland, where he had spent most of his time in custody. The judge placed the offending at the low end of the scale, set a headline sentence of ten months and treated the guilty plea and the difficulty of serving time in an Irish prison as mitigating factors.