Romanian squatters may have been illegally held in courtroom

After a judge committed 27 Romanian squatters to prison for contempt of court it was revealed that only one of them had been legally summoned to appear in court.

This means gardaí would have to arrest the remaining 26 at a Dublin flats complex and bring them to court on Thursday morning.

A mix-up on who was and who was not legally summoned before the court meant that a Romanian man and 11 Romanian women, one of them eight months pregnant, had been detained by gardaí in the courtroom at the Four Courts for two hours.

Judge Roderick Maguire, who directed that 27 named Romanian squatters in the flats complex be jailed for contempt of court, had not made any order directing that the 11 unidentified people who had attended court be held there by gardaí.

There were screams and tears when the 11 people, some of them mothers of young children, were told by gardaí they could not leave the court until transport had arrived for their transfer to prison.

It was two hours later that the…