OMAGH COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN
Omagh: could it happen again?
Ex-police chief: security mistakes being repeated
BY REBECCA BLACK
newseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
A BOMBING on the scale of Omagh could happen again, according to the senior detective who investigated the 1998 Real IRA attack.
Norman Baxter, ex-head of the Serious Crime Branch, told a hearing of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that the pattern of dissident activity in the run-up to Omagh is now being repeated.
Twenty nine people were killed and hundreds injured following the car bomb left in the bustling town by the Real IRA eleven years ago.
Mr Baxter who has now retired from the police said "the authorities and Government had their eye off the ball",
"Omagh can't be seen as an individual incident, Omagh was the last in a series of incidents dating into the middle of the 1990s, the middle of 1997, and so there's a long lead-in to the Omagh explosion," he told the committee.
And he said the terrorists could have been arrested before the atrocity if intelligence had been shared with police.
Ex-police chief: security mistakes being repeated
BY REBECCA BLACK
newseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
A BOMBING on the scale of Omagh could happen again, according to the senior detective who investigated the 1998 Real IRA attack.
Norman Baxter, ex-head of the Serious Crime Branch, told a hearing of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that the pattern of dissident activity in the run-up to Omagh is now being repeated.
Twenty nine people were killed and hundreds injured following the car bomb left in the bustling town by the Real IRA eleven years ago.
Mr Baxter who has now retired from the police said "the authorities and Government had their eye off the ball",
"Omagh can't be seen as an individual incident, Omagh was the last in a series of incidents dating into the middle of the 1990s, the middle of 1997, and so there's a long lead-in to the Omagh explosion," he told the committee.
And he said the terrorists could have been arrested before the atrocity if intelligence had been shared with police.
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/1173
Published Date: 12-Nov-09
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