{"id":574023,"date":"2026-07-29T16:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T16:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/574023\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T16:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T16:05:10","slug":"gardai-withdraw-first-ever-obstructing-deportation-charge-against-decuplet-defendant-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/574023\/","title":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed withdraw first-ever obstructing deportation charge against \u2018decuplet\u2019 defendant \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garda\u00ed<\/a> have withdrawn the first-ever prosecution for obstructing deportation brought against a Nigerian<\/a> man who claimed he was a \u201cdecuplet\u201d mixed up with one of his nine identical brothers.<\/p>\n

Sam Okwuoha (28), who had remained subject to deportation proceedings since January and had been in custody for months, was set to face a pretrial hearing at Dublin District Court<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

However, the case did not proceed following a prosecution application to strike out, and he did not have to attend.<\/p>\n

The case stems from a Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) investigation and Judge John Hughes had sought a psychiatric report on Okwuoha\u2019s fitness to plead.<\/p>\n

The alleged \u201cdecuplet\u201d had insisted his arrest was a case of mistaken identity, leading to his being charged with a single offence under the Immigration Act 1999.<\/p>\n

He was accused of obstructing deportation on March 6th at Dublin Airport, after the Minister of Justice signed the order to remove him on January 6th.<\/p>\n

Okwuoha had denied the charge.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the court had heard that the man, who had previously lived in Dublin, replied: \u201cI am not the person,\u201d when charged, and bail was denied in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the first time we have ever used it,\u201d GNIB Det Garda Graham Dillon had said. He had alleged that officers attempted to remove the accused from the State, \u201cand the removal had to be aborted due to his behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n

The GNIB officer has said the charge \u201chas not been prosecuted before. I suppose the level of resistance is unusual\u201d.<\/p>\n

The court was told the accused maintained to be \u201cone of decuplets\u201d, 10 children from the same pregnancy.<\/p>\n

The proceedings have also heard that Okwuoha had maintained he had identical brothers and that he \u201cswapped places with his brother and came to Ireland\u201d.<\/p>\n

The detective believed Okwuoha would not appear in court if granted bail and that he had a history of failing to attend proceedings in the State and for \u201cgiving different names, using different dates of birth and identities\u201d.<\/p>\n

The charge was a \u201csummary only\u201d offence, dealt with at the District Court level, and punishable by a maximum 12-month sentence and a fine of up to \u20ac2,500.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed have withdrawn the first-ever prosecution for obstructing deportation brought against a Nigerian man who claimed he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,5721,61,60,43,21913],"class_list":["post-574023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-district-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574023","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=574023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}