It’s for the DPP to prove the allegations and that burden always remains on the prosecution, he says. Mr Bouchaker does not have to prove his innocence, does not have to call or give evidence, Mr Finnegan tells the jury.<\/p>\n
“If after hearing the evidence in this case, you have a reasonable doubt, a doubt based on reason, then you must acquit Mr Bouchaker. If you are unsatisfied beyond a reasonable doubt you are obliged to acquit him.<\/p>\n
“This case concerns an incident that attracted a very considerable amount of public attention. You’re likely to have seen public commentary, visual, TV descriptions of what may have happened. You must put all of that entirely out of your minds.<\/p>\n
“You must not rely on media reports…social media, public opinion. You must put it out of your minds and consider the evidence you are going to hear. It must not be decided on emotion, sympathy, outrage.”<\/p>\n
Mr Finnegan added: “In short on the afternoon 23 Nov 2023 a group of young schoolchildren were leaving Gaeilscoil Colaiste Mhuire…we say the accused approached those children, produced a knife and began stabbing or attempting to stab them.<\/p>\n
“You will hear evidence from a Leanne Flynn, an after school staff member…she intervened and she was stabbed.”<\/p>\n
They will also hear garda interviews with Mr Bouchaker. They will hear from parents and family members of some of the injured children.<\/p>\n
“You will hear I expect from Leanne Flynn that when she went to pick up children she counted them…and she was preparing to move them from school towards the creche when the attack occurred.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s for the DPP to prove the allegations and that burden always remains on the prosecution, he says.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,615,61,60,43,126743],"class_list":["post-492500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-courts","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-riad-bouchaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}