It is time for a full inquiry – north and south – into what happened in Omagh

Twenty years ago on August 2, 2001 I wrote to the RUC Chief Constable telling him that, as Police Ombudsman, I was making enquiries into a newspaper report, on July 29, 2001, that a man called Kevin Fulton, said to be a former British security force agent, had said that had the police acted on the information which he had provided to them the Omagh bomb of August 15, 1998 could have been prevented. The Chief Constable of the RUC had responded to the newspaper report denying the allegations.

On investigation we found that even had the police responded reasonably to Kevin Fulton’s intelligence alone, it was unlikely that the Omagh bomb could have been prevented. However, we rapidly became aware of other information, including a very detailed anonymous telephone call which had been made to the police on August 4, 1998, which named three individuals and gave the nickname of a fourth person and which stated that an “unspecified attack would be made on police in Omagh on August 15, 1998”. Special Branch were informed as rapidly as possible, but the commanding officer in Omagh was not told about it until August 15, 2000, two years after the bomb exploded.

Warning

That officer should have been told immediately about the very specific warning of an attack on August 15, 1998. He should then have decided with other officers how to respond to the threat. Had vehicle checkpoints been established on the roads into Omagh on August 15 the bombers might have been deterred. Other action could also have been taken by the RUC. No such action was taken. Dissident republican terrorists were able to drive their bomb right into the middle of Omagh on a glorious sunny afternoon.

On December 12, 2001 I reported that we had identified multiple failings by the police, including failures by Special Branch to provide intelligence to the Omagh bomb Investigation. We had encountered many problems during the investigation. I stated that: “The persons responsible for the Omagh bombing are the terrorists who planned and executed the atrocity. Nothing contained in this report should detract from that clear and unequivocal fact.” However I also “concluded, with great sadness that the judgement and leadership of the Chief Constable and ACC Crime have been seriously flawed. As a result of that, the chances of detaining and convicting the Omagh bombers have been significantly reduced. The victims, their families, the people of Omagh and officers of the RUC have been let down by defective leadership, poor judgement and a lack of urgency. This should not have been the response to an incident which resulted in the death of 29 people and two unborn children.”

In 2002, I was approached by Garda Detective Sergeant John White who raised concerns relating to the handling of intelligence about the activities of the Real IRA during 1998 by An Garda Síochána officers. I found John White’s testimony to be credible. It was corroborated by substantial documentation. In March 2002, I took my report on the issue to the Irish Government. A ‘group’ was established to examine the allegations made by DS White. I visited the group and they told me that they had no access to Irish Special Branch files. The group concluded that there was no substance to the allegations.

Much has happened since then, including a successful civil action in 2009. Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly were all held liable for the Omagh bomb and were ordered to pay £1.6m in damages.

The Omagh families have fought consistently to try and secure a public inquiry into all that happened, and on August 15, 2018 I supported their call saying that I now believed, in the light of all the evidence which had emerged, that the bomb could have been prevented.

Facts

The facts surrounding what happened that day in August 23 years ago are still not fully known. In 2013, after the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had refused a public inquiry, Michael Gallagher, the father of Aidan Gallagher who died in the bomb, brought legal proceedings to challenge that decision. Those proceedings lasted eight years.

On July 23, at the High Court in Belfast the judge, in a summary judgement, ruled that  he was “satisfied that certain grounds when considered separately or together give rise to plausible allegations that there was a real prospect of preventing the Omagh bombing.” He said that he was satisfied that a further investigation, compliant with European human rights law, was necessary on both sides of the border into the activities of prominent dissident terrorist republicans leading up to the Omagh bomb. He said that: “It is not within my power to order any type of investigation to take place in the Republic of Ireland but there is a real advantage in an Article 2 compliant investigation proceeding in the Republic of Ireland simultaneously with one in Northern Ireland….” The full judgment has yet to be published as it is being security checked.

The Northern Ireland Secretary of State has said in response that “the Omagh families deserve answers” and that “we recognise that today the Court has set out that there are ‘plausible allegations that there was a real prospect of preventing the Omagh bombing’ and that more should be done to investigate this.”

He also said that the  UK government “will take time to consider the judge’s statement and all its recommendations carefully as we wait for the full judgment to be published.”

However, in a statement made just days earlier on July 14, the Secretary of State had announced new British government proposals for the future handling of the unsolved murders of ‘the Troubles’, saying that the government wanted “to facilitate reconciliation.” Bizarrely, he proposes to secure that reconciliation by introducing legislation to deprive the families of those who died during the Troubles of all their legal rights. If passed there will be no more inquests into Troubles deaths, such as the recent and profoundly important Ballymurphy inquests; families will lose their rights to timely, independent, effective criminal investigation of such deaths and there will be no right to sue in the courts for damages.

Processes

Legal processes for dealing with deaths such as inquests, criminal investigation and civil actions have evolved over the centuries, and involve a complex balancing of rights. The proposal by the British government is that the people of Northern Ireland will no longer be entitled to the legal rights which exist in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

These proposals have been comprehensively rejected in the North. There is an obvious and very serious tension between these proposals and the judgment  of July 23 in the Omagh case.

Now the Omagh families are awaiting the publication of the full judgement and the response of the two governments. The judge has said that there should be full and effective investigation both sides of the border. International joint investigations are now routine in the investigation of serious crime. It is time for a full inquiry, north and south, into what happened that day in August 1998. Only when we know what happened will we be able to learn from the mistakes which were made, and to utilise that knowledge in the fight against terrorism today.