Baroness Nuala O'Loan The former Police Ombudsman for the North has called for a full international inquiry into the circumstances that led to the Omagh bomb in 1998.
Writing in her column in The Irish Catholic, Baroness Nuala O’Loan also criticised plans by the British government to offer an amnesty when it comes to Troubles-related deaths.
She accused Boris Johnson’s government of wanting “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,” she writes.
On the Omagh bomb, the anniversary of which occurs on August 15, Mrs O’Loan insists that “the facts surrounding what happened that day in August 23 years ago are still not fully known” referring to allegations that security forces might have been able to prevent the attack.
Baroness O’Loan also reveals that a group set up to examine allegations made by a garda detective sergeant “told me that they had no access to Irish Special Branch files”.
“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,” Baroness O’Loan writes.