Solicitor advocate Paul Farrell told the court that the tourism degree student “literally took a wrong turn – a wrong turn on the way home and a wrong turn in his life”.

He said that when he came upon the rioting, Baker was “quite literally a moth attracted to a dangerous flame”.

The judge told the former Royal Belfast Academical Institution pupil he had let his family and himself down and that the message had repeatedly gone out that “people who get involved in riotous situations in this city can expect custodial sentences as an almost automatic consequence”.

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