A man jailed for 5½ years over forcing his then partner into the boot of her car and later savagely beating her has lost a Supreme Court appeal against his sentence.
Soufiane Mountassir (40), with an address at Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in December 2023 to one count of false imprisonment in Dublin 8 and one count of assault causing harm to his then partner on Blackhall Street, Dublin 7, in the early hours of November 13th, 2022.
He had been drinking and taking drugs throughout the day of the attack.
The court heard that Mountassir, who is wanted in Germany for arson, went into what his former partner called “a blind rage” and put her through one hour and 40 minutes of being beaten and kicked, including punching her and ramming her head against the steering wheel. She feared for her life.
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The Circuit Court set a headline sentence of five years for the false imprisonment offence.
Taking into account Mountassir’s guilty plea and his personal circumstances as a foreign national with no family here, the judge imposed a three-year sentence for false imprisonment. The charge of assault was taken into consideration.
The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the sentence as unduly lenient and Last October the Court of Appeal overturned it and imposed a sentence of 5½ years.
The Supreme Court granted him another appeal as there were important legal issues in the case which needed to be clarified.
On Friday, a five-judge Supreme Court unanimously dismissed his appeal and upheld the higher sentence.
In the first of two concurring judgments, Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley said the existence of an intimate relationship is an aggravating factor under section 40 of the Domestic Violence Act 2018.
This is because it increases the harm caused to a victim and may also increase the culpability of the offender, she said. In this case it did both.
The headline sentence will therefore be higher than it would otherwise have been.
It is not necessary for a trial judge to specify the extent of the “uplift” in sentence, but it must be clear that the intent of the Domestic Violence Act provision has been observed, she said.
She also said the practice of taking offences into consideration when passing sentence in respect of more than one offence is not unlawful, but it requires care on the part of the sentencing judge.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Maurice Collins also dismissed the appeal but differed in some respects from his colleague’s analysis.
He said section 40 of the Act does not prescribe any particular “uplift” in sentence to be imposed, nor does it make a custodial sentence mandatory or presumptively require that such a sentence be imposed.
In every case, the appropriate sentence remains a matter for the sentencing court to determine.
In the absence of exceptional circumstances, the court is however required to reflect the fact that the offending was directed towards a current or former partner by way of a greater sentence than might otherwise be considered, he said.
He agreed with Ms Justice O’Malley that the sentence imposed by the Circuit Court was unduly lenient and the sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal represented a correct assessment of the various factors in this case.
