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The Omagh Bomb 1998. Inching toward Justice or further Disappointment?

Legal - February 3, 2025
On Saturday 15 August 1998 the small town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, was devastated by a terrorist bomb killing twenty-nine people and two unborn children while seriously injuring two hundred and fifty people. Those murdered by the blast came from all strands of the community, including the main religious denominations, Catholic and Protestant. Two Spanish tourists were also numbered among the dead.
The event would come to be seen as the single worst terrorist atrocity in the long tragic catalogue of horrors since the outbreak of the Northern Ireland conflict began in 1969.
Responsibility for the Omagh bomb was swiftly claimed by the terrorist group, the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA-a splinter group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army) who were violently hostile to the peace terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The intervening decades however were set to witness a prolonged and complex series of investigations, court cases, claims and counterclaims with respect to whether or not the tragic event could have been prevented or if sufficiently timely action was taken that could have reduced the death toll and the numbers of those maimed by the explosion.
Indeed, despite the fact that the Northern Ireland police force, then operating under the name the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) had immediately established an Omagh Bomb Investigation Team, it was not until 2002 when the first criminal conviction would be obtained against Colm Murphy, who was originally arrested over the bombing in a 1999 in a joint RUC- An Garda Síochána (Irish police) investigation.
Murphy was jailed for 14 years after being found guilty by the Dublin Special Criminal Court of conspiracy to cause the Omagh bombing. However, he was subsequently cleared in a 2010 retrial, after interview evidence from An Garda Síochána was ruled inadmissible.
By that time, Murphy and five other men had already been found liable in a civil case taken by the victim’s families in 2008.
Claims of missed opportunities to prevent the attack were first publicly aired in July 2001, when the Sunday People newspaper printed revelations and allegations from a man who described himself as a former British security force agent operating within the ranks of dissident republicans, and who was given the name of Kevin Fulton.
Fulton argued that he had passed vital intelligence about the attack to the RUC prior to the explosion.
This led the office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland to begin investigating these claims in August 2001.
The remit of the investigation was to establish:
  • If relevant information was available to the RUC prior to the bomb;
  • If such information did exist, whether it had been responded to appropriately by the RUC;
  • Whether intelligence held by the RUC was appropriately shared with and exploited by the Omagh Bomb Investigation Team.
The investigations Report released in December 2001 found that while the person known as Kevin Fulton did pass information relating to alleged dissident terrorist activities to his British security force handler on five occasions between June and August 1998, he never claimed that a bomb was destined for Omagh.
The Police Ombudsman found  that “taking into account all the information provided by Kevin Fulton, which has become available during the course of this investigation, the objective conclusion of the Police Ombudsman is that, even if reasonable action had been taken in respect of that intelligence alone it is unlikely that the Omagh Bomb could have been prevented.”
The Police Ombudsman was also to investigate the crucial claim that an anonymous call was made to police on 4 August 1998 which stated that an “unspecified attack would be made on police in Omagh on 15 August 1998.” It was later to emerge that while the police officer who received the telephone call informed the RUC’s Special Branch indicating that this was a serious threat; the Special Branch dismissed the call as a “fall out between smugglers.”
The Police Ombudsman was eventually to report that while she was firmly of the view that this significant information was not handled correctly, “it is not possible to say what impact other action between 4 August 1998 and 15 August 1998 would have had, or whether action other than that taken by Special Branch could have prevented the Omagh Bomb.”
The Report concluded with a severely critical condemnation of RUC conduct:
“This report is about a failure of leadership. The Police Ombudsman recognises and acknowledges the pressures, burdens and personal risks faced by members of the RUC in dealing with acts of terrorism and atrocities of the scale of the Omagh bombing. The victims, their families and officers of the RUC have been let down by defective leadership, poor judgement and a lack of urgency.”
The findings were categorically rejected by the PSNI with the then Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan describing the Police Ombudsman’s Report as neither “fair, thorough or rigorous.”
The PSNI also rejected accusations of a lack of co-operation with the Ombudsman’s investigators. Far from there a being a lack of engagement, the PSNI insisted, the Police Ombudsman’s investigators were given “unprecedented access to systems and information.” It rejected outright the accusations of defective leadership, poor judgement and a lack of urgency.
In the 24 years since the Report was issued, there has been no meaningful reconciliation of these radically divergent interpretations of the actions taken before and after the atrocity occurred.
The political fallout from the attack has also been substantial particularly with respect to assertions from the victims’ families that their calls to successive Irish Government regarding the establishment of Cross-Border Inquiry have failed to receive any support. Pressure for such an Inquiry has been led by Michael Gallagher representing The Omagh Support and Self Help Group.
According to a confidential report compiled by the Group in 2012, detailed evidence exists to support claims that the RUC, An Garda Siochana, MI5 and the FBI all failed to share important intelligence in relation to the Real IRA during the months leading up to the atrocity.
These claims have been rejected by Irish Governments on the basis of a comprehensive review in 2018 of the submission from the Omagh Support and Self Help Group by the then Irish Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan.
The review concluded that “there was not significant new and credible evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the State, or its agencies being put forward that would warrant the establishment of a public inquiry.” This has remained the position of the Irish state despite repeated calls for a Cross-Border Inquiry.
The United Kingdom has however acceded to a request for a statutory inquiry. In February 2024 the Omagh Bombing Public Inquiry was established by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to investigate whether the bombing could reasonably have been prevented by UK state authorities.
Its terms of reference duplicate some of the terms of reference of the 2001 Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman’s Investigation. In other respects however it is broader in scope as it extends to “any other matters which are relevant to whether the Omagh Bombing on 15th August 1998 could have been prevented by UK state authorities and to the extent it is relevant to the issue of preventability by UK state authorities, this may include information sharing and investigations with and by state authorities in the Republic of Ireland.”
Minister for Foreign affairs in the previous Irish administration, and now Taoieach, Micheál Martin stated in May 2024 that officials from his Department and the Department of Justice “had some engagement with the Inquiry team before the Terms of Reference were published and are now in ongoing contact.”
He also confirmed that the Irish State will continue to cooperate fully with the UK Inquiry and that a number of measures are available to provide for assistance which includes provisions for Garda cooperation with statutory inquiries in the UK.
The UK Inquiry has dominated recent news cycles in Ireland following its decision to commence four weeks of “Commemorative and Personal Statement Hearings in Strule Arts Centre in Omagh on 28 January 2025.”
This is important because these hearings are the first oral hearings held by the Inquiry with the purpose of commemorating publicly each person who was killed in the bombing, and secondly because it will hear personal statements from those who were injured in or were directly affected by the bombing.
This, the Inquiry says, “will recognise the wider impact of the atrocity on the community in Omagh and beyond.”
While these opportunities are welcomed by many of the victim’s families it is important to note the apprehension expressed by those such as Claire Hayes, whose brother Alan Radford was killed in the bomb when he was 16.
Ms Hayes is reported as saying she was sceptical of the outcome of the inquiry due to what she believes is an ongoing lack of transparency from government bodies. She believes the conclusion of the inquiry will bring out “a very diluted version of the truth”.
It is clear that the plight of the victims’ families and the agony they have endured following the barbaric loss of their loved ones continues to cast a dark shadow over their lives.
It can only be hoped that the process currently underway will finally reconcile some of the divergent and conflicting interpretations that have persisted since 1998 and that it will also bring the kind of clarity, transparency and accountability the families so desperately long for.