Home / Case Files / Hoyda Hamad
Reporter competition thirty-nine entrant

Hoyda Hamad: a stranger attacked, three conviction names and an identity still unresolved

Eighteen days after receiving a suspended sentence, the person convicted as Hoyda Hamad kicked a woman out jogging on Dublin’s East Wall Road. The later court record linked the same fingerprints to convictions under Youssouf Chergui and Youssouf Angelina and to 27 reported aliases in Britain and France.

Published 31 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
3 namesUsed for identified convictions
27 aliasesReported in Britain and France
20 priorsTotal stated at later hearing
18 daysSuspended sentence to assault

An unprovoked attack on a woman out jogging

At about 10.05am on 26 July 2025, a woman was jogging on East Wall Road in Dublin 3 when a stranger kicked her in the stomach. She fell to the ground and was subjected to verbal abuse. The court heard that she sustained a back injury and swollen finger and that her head was throbbing after the attack.

Gardaí attended and the offender supplied a false name and date of birth. He was arrested, remanded in custody and later pleaded guilty under the name Hoyda Hamad to assault under section 2 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.

On 6 August 2025, Judge Patricia Cronin imposed three months’ imprisonment, backdated to the date of the attack. Charges of giving a false or misleading name and address and using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour were taken into consideration. The guilty plea meant the woman did not have to attend court or give evidence.

The suspended sentence just 18 days earlier

The assault happened 18 days after a Wexford District Court sentence for two theft convictions under the Hamad name. The Irish Times, BreakingNews.ie and The Journal reported that the earlier suspended term was two months. A later Gript court report described it as three months. The accessible reports do not reconcile that discrepancy.

The assault report said that the suspended term could be activated. No reviewed source establishes whether it was later activated, so this file does not treat either disputed length as additional time served.

Three conviction names and a much larger record

The 6 August sentence report recorded another group of convictions under a different name: three involving vehicle theft and driving offences, one for drug possession, one for burglary, one for trespass and one for failing to produce a passport as required.

Those convictions produced a Cork District Court prison sentence on 31 July 2024. The mainstream assault reports described the term as ten months; the later Gript account described an 11-month sentence for burglary-related offending. Both figures are retained because the accessible material does not establish whether they describe the same sentencing total in different ways.

At the later hearing, the court was told that the same person had convictions under three names: Hoyda Hamad in Dublin and Wexford, Youssouf Angelina in Cork and Youssouf Chergui in Britain. The final report put the total at 20 previous convictions, including eight in Britain. The British record was said to include sexual assault, failure to comply with an order and possessing false identity documents with intent. A complete conviction schedule was not published.

Fingerprints exposed the alias trail

After the East Wall arrest, Garda Patrick Watson told a contested bail hearing that extensive national and international inquiries were required because the accused would not provide a name. Cork Gardaí recognised the person under another identity, while Interpol inquiries were reported to have found six identities in France and 21 in Britain. Four further identities had been used in Ireland.

The court heard that the person had no established passport, had supplied seven addresses after the East Wall arrest and had once presented to Tusla as a minor before an assessment found that claim was not correct. When the defence disputed the identity on the charge sheet, Garda Watson said the fingerprints identified the person.

The 27 figure refers to the reported British and French aliases. It should not be silently combined with the four Irish identities because the sources do not establish whether any overlap.

A separate sex-offender notification conviction

On 13 August 2025, the person appeared by video link under the name Youssouf Chergui and pleaded guilty to failing to provide the Irish authorities with the address required of a person subject to sex-offender notification obligations. The obligation followed a British sexual-assault conviction.

Judge Alan Mitchell imposed two months’ imprisonment. A false-information charge was taken into consideration. The published report does not say whether this sentence ran consecutively to or concurrently with the three-month assault term, whether it was backdated, or how it interacted with other custody. The terms therefore cannot responsibly be added together.

Identity, nationality and immigration limits

At the assault hearing, the defence described Hamad as originally from Syria and as having travelled through France. At the later hearing, the person claimed dual Syrian and Algerian nationality and was also said to have been recorded as Libyan. Garda evidence was that no valid identification had been supplied and the person’s true identity remained unknown.

The 7 August report said the Garda National Immigration Bureau had no record under the name then supplied and that the person had not presented to international-protection services. Those are name-specific court reports, not proof of every possible record under 27 or more identities.

No reviewed source establishes citizenship, lawful or unlawful presence, a protection determination, a deportation order, a removal destination, an eventual release date or present location. Judicial and Garda comments about possible deportation described an unresolved enforcement problem; they did not constitute a removal decision.

Separate cost benchmarks, not one invented bill

The Irish Prison Service reported an average 2024 cost of €99,072 per available staffed prison space. Applying that later system-wide rate produces three separate capacity comparisons:

These are not a combined bill and are not offender-specific invoices. The later terms may overlap, the Cork sentence length is disputed in the reporting, and actual time served is not established. The figures exclude Garda and Interpol inquiries, prosecution, courts, legal aid, prison healthcare, victim support, counselling and any immigration assessment.

The disputed two- or three-month Wexford term was suspended. Without evidence of activation, it carries no defensible immediate-custody benchmark here.

Chronology

Sources

Record checked: 31 July 2026. The Irish Times, BreakingNews.ie and The Journal assault articles substantially reproduce the same Tom Tuite court report and are corroborating publications, not three independent evidentiary chains. Sentence-length discrepancies are preserved; identity and nationality claims are not converted into established facts.