Kinahan cartel gangster Liam Byrne (43) learned his fate on a screen. Wearing a black Nike T-shirt and grey tracksuit bottoms, the Crumlin native joined his Old Bailey sentence hearing on Tuesday via video-link from Belmarsh prison, 10 miles further down the river Thames.
Byrne listened intently and squinted as Judge Philip Katz gave him five years for weapons offences. Minutes later, perhaps with the maths done in his head, Byrne sat back in his chair, smiling and chatting with guards. With time already served, he could be out by next Christmas.
For his brother-in-law and weapons co-conspirator Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh, tuning in from an adjoining room at Belmarsh, the future must have seemed further away.
Kavanagh is already serving 21 years on a separate drugs charge, on top of three years for having a stun gun. The six years Judge Katz gave him for the weapons plot with Byrne will be added on: a total of 30 years. He should serve roughly half. As he has done more than five years already, the 57 year old will be behind bars for almost another decade.
If he was despondent at the stretch lying ahead, Kavanagh didn’t show it. He was impassive during the hearing as he sat wearing a grey polo shirt and dark trousers, arms folded. A further co-conspirator tuning in from another Belmarsh room, Liverpool man Shaun Kent (38), was edgier than the others. Kent’s six year sentence meant he could be released imminently with time served.
Byrne’s smiling at the end was the only real emotion he showed over the two-day hearing. The defendants had been in the Old Bailey in-person on Monday, sitting in the dock flanked by prison guards and surrounded by a glass barrier. They said nothing only to affirm their names.
Byrne’s barrister, Jeremy Dein, had pleaded with Judge Katz to be lenient with the Dublin criminal. He said the death of his father, James Byrne, and his cousin, fellow gangster Liam Roe, had affected him deeply. At the mention of his father Byrne’s head dipped for a few moments. Then he raised it again and stared ahead, appearing to concentrate on keeping his emotions in check.
Relatives of the two Irishmen could not be seen in the public gallery from the well of the court for Tuesday’s video link hearing. For Monday’s in-person session, two sons of Kavanagh’s were there along with Byrne’s surviving brother, James Byrne jnr. Their sibling, David Byrne, was murdered in the Regency hotel shooting in 2016.
James Byrne jnr had leant over the court balcony as everybody was coming back after lunch on Monday, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother in the dock below.
After the sentence Liam Byrne got on Tuesday, it won’t be too long until they are together again.
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