The trial of a man charged with the country\u2019s largest-ever crystal meth seizure, valued at more than \u20ac32 million, has been adjourned until Friday after he sought access to witnesses\u2019 phones.<\/p>\n
James Leen (43) of Pilgrim Hill, Kilmorna, Listowel, Co Kerry<\/a>, faces five charges including one for directing the activities of a criminal organisation between February 7th, 2023, and February 16th, 2024.<\/p>\n Leen is also charged with the importation of methylamphetamine, better known as crystal meth, at Cork Port, Ringaskiddy, Co Cork<\/a>, on October 16th, 2023.<\/p>\n He is further charged with possession of crystal meth at Ballyseedy Garden Centre in Tralee between October 27th, 2023, and February 12th, 2024.<\/p>\n The case relates to the seizure of 564kg of methamphetamine, or crystal meth, with an estimated value of \u20ac32.8 million from a container at Cork Port on February 16th, 2024.<\/p>\n The State\u2019s case is that the drugs were imported from Mexico<\/a> and stored at the Ballyseedy Garden Centre before being transported to Cork, where they were destined for export to Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n Leen\u2019s trial at the Special Criminal Court<\/a> was expected to get under way on Monday. <\/p>\n However, Colm Smyth, counsel for Leen, asked for an adjournment so an expert in Texas in the US<\/a> can analyse data from phones belonging to various proposed witnesses in the trial.<\/p>\n John Berry, for the Director of Public Prosecutions<\/a>, said garda\u00ed<\/a> have already disclosed to the defence all relevant material from those phones.<\/p>\n He said a difficulty arises because the defence wants access to all data on those phones, including that which is deeply personal to the witnesses and not relevant to the trial. <\/p>\n He said Irish courts have no jurisdiction to impose conditions on an expert working in the US that would safeguard that information.<\/p>\n Judge Caroline Biggs, presiding at the three-judge, non-jury court, said there are experts in Ireland who can carry out the work suggested.<\/p>\n She said it was not appropriate to come into court on the day of the trial and ask for an adjournment for the same reason an adjournment was given a year ago.<\/p>\n She asked that every effort be made to secure an Irish expert this week and adjourned the matter until Friday. <\/p>\n If there are no Irish companies who can do the work, she said the court would consider whether it is appropriate to allow the data to be analysed outside the jurisdiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial of a man charged with the country\u2019s largest-ever crystal meth seizure, valued at more than \u20ac32…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,16186,1346,61,60,7727,43,31297],"class_list":["post-645876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork","tag-director-of-public-prosecutions","tag-garda-siochana","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry","tag-news","tag-special-criminal-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645876","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=645876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}