A military tribunal in Lebanon sentenced a man to death for the 2022 murder of 24-year-old Irish UN soldier Seán Rooney, according to Irish and Lebanese media reports.
Rooney, a private, was murdered while driving a UN vehicle through the village of Al-Aqbiya, Lebanon, in December 2022.
Traveling along with several colleagues in two separate convoys, the soldiers were heading to Beirut Airport - an area with a record of being under Hezbollah control.
A Beirut court sentenced Mohammad Ayyad to death this week for the murder. If carried out, the Irish Times reported that Ayyad’s death sentence would be the first to be carried out in the country in the last 20 years.
Ayyad was not in court when the sentence was announced on Monday, after previously being released on bail. He was also ordered to pay 100 million Lebanese pounds.
Hezbollah handed over a suspect in 2022, though it is unclear if that was Ayyad. The terror group denied that those responsible for the attack were members, though Irish officials have insisted the murderers were connected to the organization.
Other defendants are also understood to have received lighter sentences for lesser charges.
Lawsuit against the UN
Irish Defense Minister Simon Harris, according to local media, said in response to the sentencing, “While noting the sentence handed down to the main defendant, I am disappointed and share the disappointment of Pte Rooney’s family at the lighter sentences imposed on a number of those convicted today.”
The sentencing was carried out after Rooney’s mother, Natasha, won in June the right to sue the UN over her son’s death.
She alleged that rather than send support to rescue her son, UN officials ordered soldiers at a nearby base to stand down rather than rescue the group. The officials were said to have believed closer peacekeepers would respond to the group under fire.