BT/0992

Omagh suspect 'hid in bushes to avoid arrest'

AN electrician accused of murdering 29 people in the Omagh bomb atrocity tried to escape arrest by hiding in bushes, a court has heard.
As Sean Hoey (36) launched a new bid to be released on bail, prosecuting lawyers claimed that he could flee across the Irish border if he is freed.
Friends of Hoey are prepared to lodge £50,000 in cash along with a farm and land assurities that he would turn up for trial, Belfast Crown Court was told yesterday.
Hoey's mother, Rita, would also hand over her total savings of £1,500 and put up the family home as reassurance.
But the Crown insisted there
was a further risk of dissident republican terrorist attacks if the accused, of Molly Road, Jonesborough on the south Armagh border, was granted bail.
Gordon Kerr, QC, said: "That's to be coupled with the fact that when police came to arrest him in September 2003 it is submitted that he tried to escape and was found in undergrowth some distance from his house."
Hoey faces a total of 58 charges relating to the August 1998 Omagh bomb massacre carried out by the Real IRA and a series of other terrorist strikes at around the same period across Northern Ireland.
The court was told he has been in custody for 882 days,
with his defence stressing that in England remanded suspects obtain automatic bail after 112 days.
But Mr Kerr told the judge, Mr Justice Weir, that his main objection was the fear that Hoey, due to stand in September, would not surrender again.
"He has connections to relatives on both sides of the border and a mobile occupation in the sense that he's an electrician."
Mr Kerr added that evidence linking Hoey to the construction of bombs used at Omagh and other towns showed these were devices connected with rogue terrorist organisations.