Man made ‘unfounded accusations’ against SF councillor

A judge has dismissed the case of a man who allegedly harassed a Sinn Féin councillor and threatened to “expose” him as the operator of an Antifa account on X.

Craig Fitzsimmons, with an address at Bayside Park, Dublin 13, appeared before Judge Deirdre Gearty at a special sitting of Mullingar District Court charged under section 4 of the Harassment and Harmful Communications Act.

It was alleged that Sinn Féin’s David Jones, a councillor for the Mullingar Kinnegad District, received a large number of abusive text messages and approximately 30 unwanted phone calls from Mr Fitzsimmons between May and August 2022.

The accused pleaded not guilty to those charges, and to posting in a Telegram chat group called Statistical Soldier Chat, calling Cllr Jones a paedophile.

Garda Simon Connaghton told the court that Mr Fitzsimmons had made “unfounded accusations” against Cllr Jones, “saying he was a paedophile and a member of various organisations”.

In his direct evidence, he said he was on duty in Mullingar on August 26, 2022, when Cllr Jones attended the station and outlined that he was the subject of unwanted phone calls, texts and social media posts.

“He had done his own homework and had his suspicions as to who this gentleman may be,” said Gda Connaughton, adding that Mr Jones had screenshots of the messages and calls.

Screenshots of the Statistical Soldiers chat on Telegram showed messages from an account named Craig Lee Fitz, labelling Cllr Jones a “terrorist” and “paedophile” and inciting group members to “expose” him.

Messages sent to Cllr Jones also referred to an Antifa account on X (formerly Twitter), which the sender labelled a “terrorist account”, which has “assailed me with death threats for three years now”. Further messages asked “are you a paedophile?”.

Cllr Jones provided gardaí with the phone number from which the texts and calls were received and gardaí carried out a CS trace on the phone number, applying through Crimeline Security to get provider details. However, the phone was a prepaid and unregistered device.

When a pulse check was carried out on the phone number, Gda Connaughton found it to be associated with Craig Fitzsimmons and travelled to the accused’s address in Dublin.

Mr Fitzsimmons voluntarily made a statement at Raheny Garda Station, stating he wanted to write about Cllr Jones for the Irish Inquiry, to “expose him”, and that he should “prepare for prison and exposure and humiliation”.

He said that Anifa had been “bleating about my alleged harassment of David Jones” and that the organisation could only make such statements if Cllr Jones were in control of them.

He said that “Antifa mobs” had been falsely calling people Nazis, bigots and homophobes, and that they have “threatened to kill and rape our families”. However, he admitted he had no evidence that Mr Jones is “a practicing paedophile”.

When Mr Fitzsimmons’ defence indicated they would be introducing screenshot images as evidence, Judge Gearty refused to allow it because screenshots from both sides were “clearly hearsay evidence”.

“I would have to have evidence from each forum to prove who put them up,” she said, dismissing the entire case.