HIGH TIME TO LISTEN TO OMAGH RELATIVES
High time to listen to the Omagh relatives
For the long-suffering families of the Omagh victims (and never has that word "long-suffering" been more apt) the week has brought another revelation to rub even more salt in unhealed wounds.
What did spies at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) know about the movements of the bombers on the day?
According to a documentary, calls between two mobile phones were being tracked as the deadly cargo was being transported into the town.
Could the authorities have stopped the bombs? In hindsight where everything seems so much more straightforward, that might seem to be the case. But it's hard to believe that even if GCHQ assumed the target was the police (no one, surely, could have envisaged the sequence of events that followed the planting of the bomb) it would have been unthinkable that they didn't try to prevent loss of life.
Perhaps, though, they couldn't act at the time. The calls, it's suggested, may not have been tracked in "live" time.
Still. It's hard to understand why this material wasn't passed on to the police in the immediate aftermath.
Once the bomb had gone off, surely such tracking would have been checked immediately to see what could be gleaned from it.
So why wasn't this intelligence passed on? And why has it taken journalist John Ware (as opposed to say, a security chief or a government minister) to uncover this information and make it public?
To the families it is just another knife in the guts. As Michael Gallagher who lost his 21 year-old son Aidan, points out: "This news is simply earth-shattering for us... It is legally and morally imperative that the authorities provide a way for this evidence to be aired."
One way in which it could be aired, of course, is in the context of the current civil case being taken by some of the families.
Jason McCue (left) from the lawyers H2O points out: "It is clear that such evidence could be highly relevant. The families' civil action is the only remaining legitimate proceeding that relevant evidence can be laid before. If Panorama's evidence is correct, it is hard to imagine how the authorities could morally refuse to make some amends to the victims by providing some method for the evidence in the recordings to be aired in their action."
It is a compelling argument. Let's hope that (this time) the authorities are listening.
For the long-suffering families of the Omagh victims (and never has that word "long-suffering" been more apt) the week has brought another revelation to rub even more salt in unhealed wounds.
What did spies at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) know about the movements of the bombers on the day?
According to a documentary, calls between two mobile phones were being tracked as the deadly cargo was being transported into the town.
Could the authorities have stopped the bombs? In hindsight where everything seems so much more straightforward, that might seem to be the case. But it's hard to believe that even if GCHQ assumed the target was the police (no one, surely, could have envisaged the sequence of events that followed the planting of the bomb) it would have been unthinkable that they didn't try to prevent loss of life.
Perhaps, though, they couldn't act at the time. The calls, it's suggested, may not have been tracked in "live" time.
Still. It's hard to understand why this material wasn't passed on to the police in the immediate aftermath.
Once the bomb had gone off, surely such tracking would have been checked immediately to see what could be gleaned from it.
So why wasn't this intelligence passed on? And why has it taken journalist John Ware (as opposed to say, a security chief or a government minister) to uncover this information and make it public?
To the families it is just another knife in the guts. As Michael Gallagher who lost his 21 year-old son Aidan, points out: "This news is simply earth-shattering for us... It is legally and morally imperative that the authorities provide a way for this evidence to be aired."
One way in which it could be aired, of course, is in the context of the current civil case being taken by some of the families.
Jason McCue (left) from the lawyers H2O points out: "It is clear that such evidence could be highly relevant. The families' civil action is the only remaining legitimate proceeding that relevant evidence can be laid before. If Panorama's evidence is correct, it is hard to imagine how the authorities could morally refuse to make some amends to the victims by providing some method for the evidence in the recordings to be aired in their action."
It is a compelling argument. Let's hope that (this time) the authorities are listening.
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/1111
Published Date: 17-Sep-08
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