A LIMERICK man who was jailed for ten years for his part in a high profile tiger kidnapping is to appeal his conviction.
Zachary Coughlan Ryan was found guilty of kidnapping two teenage boys, one the son of a postmistress, and holding them hostage for a €500,000 ransom in August 2012.
Throughout his trial in October 2013, the 38-year-old from Brennan’s Bow, Catherine Place, maintained his “absolute innocence”.
In January 2014, he was taken to a maximum security prison in Leinster to begin his ten year sentence, having already spent a total of 19 years in prison.
During the trial, which was held amid tight security, the jury heard details of the “amateurish heist” where Coughlan Ryan, another man and a 17-year-old teenager captured the two boys and held them at knife and gun point.
One of the teenagers was released to deliver a €500,000 ransom demand while his companion was held at gunpoint in a field on the outskirts of the city.
The second man absconded while the teenager, Jonathan Blackwell, was sentenced to five years detention and supervision.
At the time of the kidnapping, Zachary Coughlan Ryan had a two-year suspended sentence hanging over him for assaulting a prison officer in Cork in 2011. This sentence was activated after he was found guilty of the kidnapping.
He had served a sentence in the UK for robbery and had other convictions for violent offences including the assault of prison officers, escaping from custody and possession of knives.
He tried to escape on two occasions while the Garda investigation was ongoing.
His defence counsel, the late Brendan NIx, SC, told the court that his client “maintained his absolute innocence”, and always claimed that he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of.
At the sentence hearing in Limerick Circuit Court in January 2014, Mr Justice Carroll Moran reduced the ten year jail term to eight years and three months as he took into account the 17 months that Ryan has been in custody since his arrest.
The case is to be listed in the Court of Appeal at its next sessions.
