Oudach Mbarak: three fingerprint refusals stalled a deportation document
A deportation order had been signed. The authorities still needed a travel document. Oudach Mbarak repeatedly refused the fingerprints required to obtain it, generating three convictions and further imprisonment instead of a reported removal.
An order without the document needed to execute it
A deportation order concerning Oudach Mbarak was signed on 31 October 2024. Irish law requires a person subject to such an order to cooperate as necessary to obtain a travel document, including complying with a request to affix fingerprints to it.
The public record reviewed does not explain why the order was made, which country was expected to issue the document or where Mbarak was to be sent. What the criminal court record does show is a repeated enforcement failure: requests for identifying information were refused, convictions followed, and Mbarak remained in prison with no completed removal reported.
Three refusals, three convictions
The court heard that Mbarak first failed to provide fingerprints when required on 8 May 2025 and failed again on 3 June. Those offences were dealt with together at Cork District Court on 1 July. He received two months’ imprisonment for the second offence, while the first was taken into consideration.
A third request had already been made on 24 June at Cork District Courthouse, Anglesea Street. Garda Sinead McCarthy asked Mbarak to complete an identification form and provide fingerprints so that a travel document required for his deportation could be obtained. Inspector Ray Dunne told the later hearing that Mbarak would not supply the information and did not consent to having his fingerprints taken.
On 29 July, appearing by video link from prison, Mbarak pleaded guilty to the third offence. Judge Philip O’Leary said the pattern was “not getting better”. He had considered three months but imposed a fresh two-month term beginning that day rather than backdating it.
The enforcement loop
The sequence exposes a practical gap between signing an order and carrying it out. The court heard that identifying information was required to obtain the travel document needed for Mbarak’s deportation. Section 8 of the Immigration Act 1999 makes cooperation with document requests, including fingerprint requests, a legal duty.
In this case, each refusal generated another prosecution and prison sentence, but the reports do not record that the required document was obtained or that the deportation was completed. Imprisonment punished non-cooperation; on the available record it did not resolve the administrative obstacle.
Mbarak’s solicitor said he had been working and contributing to Irish society and did not understand why he was being deported. Judge O’Leary made clear that the merits of the deportation decision were not before the District Court. The hearing concerned only the fingerprint offence.
Nationality and status limits
Mbarak was described as a man in his thirties with an address at Mandeville Lane, Waterford. His nationality is not stated in the reports reviewed and is not inferred from his name.
A section 3 deportation order means that the State treated him as a non-national required to leave and remain outside Ireland. It does not, by itself, establish how he entered Ireland, whether he made an asylum application, whether he previously held a residence permission or the ground selected for the order. The available reports also do not establish that the order was revoked, stayed, successfully challenged or ultimately enforced.
Chronology
- 31 October 2024: a deportation order is signed concerning Mbarak.
- 8 May 2025: first reported failure to provide fingerprints when required.
- 3 June 2025: second reported failure to provide fingerprints.
- 24 June 2025: at Cork District Courthouse, Mbarak refuses an identification form and fingerprints requested for a deportation travel document.
- 1 July 2025: the first two offences are dealt with together; the court imposes two months for the second and takes the first into consideration.
- 29 July 2025: Mbarak pleads guilty to the June 24 offence and receives another two-month term commencing that day.
- 31 July 2026 record check: no published appeal, order revocation or completed removal is located.
Public-cost boundary
The Irish Prison Service reported an average annual cost of €99,072 for an available, staffed prison space in 2024, or €8,256 a month. Applied only to the latest two-month sentence, that produces a nominal capacity benchmark of €16,512.
This is arithmetic, not a Mbarak-specific invoice or proof that the State spent that marginal amount. A separate two-month sentence began on 1 July, and the later sentence began while he was already imprisoned. The sources do not establish the exact overlap, remission or release dates, so the two terms are not added together here. No case-specific figure was published for Garda work, prosecution, courts, legal aid, detention, identity-document efforts or any later removal operation.
Sources
- Irish Examiner, 29 July 2025 — principal report for the third guilty plea, earlier convictions, evidence and latest sentence.
- EchoLive, 30 July 2025 — publication of Liam Heylin’s court report; not treated as a separate evidentiary chain.
- Immigration Act 1999, section 8 — official text requiring travel-document cooperation and compliance with fingerprint requests.
- Immigration Act 1999, section 3 — official text defining deportation orders and the range of grounds on which one may be made.
- Immigration Act 1999 (Deportation) Regulations 1999 — prescribed form and legal effect of a section 3 order.
- Dáil written answer, 20 May 2025 — official confirmation of the 2024 prison-space cost and its inclusions and exclusions.
- Irish Prison Service Annual Report 2024 — primary publication supporting the public-cost benchmark.
Record checked: 31 July 2026. The two case-specific publications reproduce the same court-reporting stream. Unknown nationality, immigration history, order grounds and removal outcome are deliberately left unresolved.