Three men travelled from Sweden to Dublin, shared a hotel room and headed back to Dublin Airport with more than €345,000 in cash. Gardaí stopped their taxi before a planned flight to Istanbul. Each man admitted possessing proceeds of crime and received three years in prison.

3Defendants, each sentenced to three years.
Over €345,000Cash reported at sentencing.
€891,648Combined nominal prison-capacity benchmark.

From a shared hotel room to an airport taxi

Anas Altahlh, Issa Al Aboud and Mohamad Alsourani arrived at Dublin Airport on a Ryanair flight from Denmark three days before their arrest. Court reports identify all three as originally Syrian, holding valid Swedish passports and living in the same Swedish city. They stayed together in a Dublin hotel and were due to fly to Istanbul.

Acting on confidential information, Gardaí stopped their taxi on 25 July 2025. Reports at sentencing described €206,000 and €135,000 in two suitcases, with a further €4,900 in Al Aboud’s backpack. Later court reports characterised the total as more than €345,000; an initial charge report used the lower figure €340,700. This file preserves that reporting discrepancy instead of presenting a false precision.

Guilty pleas and final sentences

Each man signed a plea admitting possession of the proceeds of criminal conduct. Judge Martin Nolan found that the circumstances supported the inference that they knew the money was illicit and that they expected to be rewarded for transporting it. None had previous convictions.

On 8 December 2025, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court imposed three years’ imprisonment on each defendant, backdated to the July arrest. The court dealt with the three men as couriers; the reviewed reports do not identify the predicate crime that generated the cash or the organisers who owned it.

Nationality and status limits

The court reports say the men were originally from Syria and held valid Swedish passports. That establishes reported nationality and travel-document facts, but it does not establish how or when Swedish citizenship was obtained, whether any man previously claimed asylum, or whether any protection status existed in Ireland.

The record reviewed for this file does not report an Irish deportation order, surrender request, transfer process or post-sentence removal outcome. A conviction does not itself prove that any such measure was legally available or taken.

Chronology

  • 22 July 2025: The three men arrive in Dublin from Denmark and share a hotel room.
  • 25 July 2025: Gardaí stop their airport-bound taxi and seize the cash.
  • 26 July 2025: They appear at a special District Court sitting and are remanded.
  • Before December 2025: Each signs a guilty plea to possessing proceeds of criminal conduct.
  • 8 December 2025: Each receives a final three-year sentence, backdated to July.

The taxpayer-cost boundary

The Irish Prison Service’s 2024 average cost for an available, staffed prison space was €99,072 a year, excluding capital expenditure. Applying that single rate to three three-year terms produces a €891,648 combined nominal prison-capacity benchmark, or €297,216 per defendant.

This is not an invoice, an audited marginal cost or proof that each man will serve a full three years. The terms were backdated and the calculation does not adjust for remand credit, remission, release administration or annual changes. It excludes Garda surveillance, prosecution, courts, legal aid and any immigration-enforcement costs. The seized cash is alleged criminal property, not taxpayer expenditure, and is not added to the benchmark.

Questions for public accountability

  1. Who supplied the cash, and who was intended to receive it in Istanbul?
  2. Was the confidential intelligence generated in Ireland or shared by an overseas agency?
  3. What confiscation order or final disposition applies to the seized money?
  4. Were the men assessed for transfer, surrender or removal after sentence?
  5. Did the investigation identify other journeys using the same route, hotel or organisers?

Sources

Record checked: 1 August 2026. The file preserves the reported cash-total discrepancy, makes no unsupported asylum or removal claim, and counts only the conditional combined prison benchmark in the public ledger.