{"id":463478,"date":"2026-05-01T16:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463478\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:15:10","slug":"four-men-charged-over-galway-mosque-terror-plot-to-face-special-criminal-court-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463478\/","title":{"rendered":"Four men charged over Galway mosque terror plot to face Special Criminal Court \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Four men are to stand trial at the nonjury <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/special-criminal-court\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/special-criminal-court\">Special Criminal Court<\/a> charged in connection with a plot to carry out a terrorist attack on a mosque in Galway last November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The four accused \u2013 Darren Gorman (33), O\u2019Moore Place, Portlaoise, Co Laois; Charles Flynn (35), Castlerock Avenue, Castleconnell, Co Limerick; Garrett Pollock (35), Kilhorne Greene, Annalong, Co Down; and Karolis Peckauskas (38), Newfoundwell Road, Drogheda, Co Louth \u2013 are all charged with attempting to engage in a terrorist activity or a terrorist-linked activity to damage by fire Maryam Mosque, Old Cottages, Monivea Road, Galway, between November 4th and 5th, 2025. The alleged offence was aggravated by hatred.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Peckauskas and Pollock are also accused of having two hatchets, a knuckle duster and a hunting knife in a silver BMW at O\u2019Moore Place, Portlaoise, on November 4th, 2025, contrary to Section 9 (5) of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Peckauskas and Pollock are further charged with possession of an explosive substance \u2013 four threaded pipe end caps and six litres of hydrogen peroxide \u2013 under such circumstances as to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they did not have it in their possession for a lawful object at O\u2019Moore Place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/podcasts\/in-the-news\/what-we-know-so-far-about-the-alleged-plot-to-destroy-galway-mosque\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What we know so far about the alleged plot to destroy Galway MosqueOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Pollock is also charged with having in his possession an explosive substance \u2013 EMCG1 \u2013 a glass jar with a metal lid, a cloth fuse, matches and tape in addition to EMCG5-EMCG10 liquids and white clumped powders, all containing  petrol,  at An Tobar, Newfoundwell Road, Drogheda, on the same date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A State solicitor on Friday made an ex-parte application (where only one side is represented) on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions to have the four accused tried before the Special Criminal Court, with the charges having been sent forward from the District Court last month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Patrick McGrath, presiding, sitting with Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Fiona Lydon, made the order in respect of each of the accused and adjourned the matter to May 11th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He directed that the defendants be produced in person on that date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four men are to stand trial at the nonjury Special Criminal Court charged in connection with a plot&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,13415,18,13,14,1878,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,14234,55624,7,8],"class_list":["post-463478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-drogheda","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-galway","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-portlaoise","tag-special-criminal-court","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}