SILENCE OF COURTROOM GIVES WAY TO TOUGH QUESTIONS
Silence of courtroom gives way to tough questions
By Barry McCaffrey
THERE was a deafening silence among the 200 people packed into courtroom 12 as Sean Hoey was led into the dock at 2.29pm to hear the verdict in the biggest murder trial in Northern Ireland's legal history.
In the public gallery the families of many of the 29 Omagh victims, who included a woman pregnant with twins, sat alongside Hoey's relatives and supporters.
Dressed in a jacket and open-necked shirt, the 38-year-old unemployed electrician bit his nails nervously as Mr Justice Weir took 20 minutes to read out the list of 58 charges against him, stretching over a dozen Real IRA attacks including the Omagh bombing.
At 3.04pm, the exact time that the Omagh bomb had exploded, the judge gave the first indication that the case against Hoey was about to collapse.
As he read out each line of his 24-page verdict it became clearer that the prosecution case had spectacularly failed through a combination of police officers' lies, flawed forensic evidence and a "slapdash" approach to protecting evidence.
At 3.55pm the judge ended the trial with the words: "I find Mr Hoey not guilty on each of the remaining counts on the indictment."
Hoey's family and supporters applauded and he was ushered away through a side door.
Outside it was senior PSNI officers who found themselves in the dock for the failed investigation.
Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who led the probe,was hurried away when Lawrence Rush, whose wife Libby was killed in the atrocity, challenged him to apologise for the failures in the case.
"I'm stressed but not over-disappointed," Mr Rush said.
"I wouldn't have liked the wrong man to be charged."
But he said: "It's devastating. It's a disaster the way that this investigation was held."
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed, expressed "deep disappointment".
"I sat through the trial for 56 days and every day you felt lower and lower," he said.
Of the police failures, he said: "When you hear it catalogued in one afternoon in the court, it beggars belief that such a thing could happen."
Highlighting the Omagh families' sense of disillusionment, Mr Gallagher said: "I remember speaking to Sir Ronnie Flanagan in the early days and saying to him that we don't want someone coming in here on very light evidence and then two years later having that conviction overturned, or having a retrial as we see in the [Colm] Murphy trial.
"We want somebody solidly convicted and we know of no reason why there should not have been solid convictions."
Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann died, said: "I'm flabbergasted, dumbfounded. I do not know what to think.
"All the resources over the last nine and a half years have not got us anywhere. Hoey has done four and a half years and I'm sure his compensation will be far greater than we had to fight and embarrass ourselves into getting."
Rita Hoey welcomed her son's acquittal and said he supported calls for a cross-border public inquiry into the bombing.
"As a mother, I would personally like to thank those from among the Omagh families who have all suffered immensely but eventually saw this as an injustice and had the moral conviction to speak out," she said.
"I want the world to know that my son Sean Hoey is innocent.
"The authorities north and south have held two separate trials but one witch-hunt.
"In both trials police officers have been exposed as lying through their teeth to secure convictions at any cost. Those very people, north and south, blocked at every turn a cross-border public inquiry.
"I want to ask the question regarding the Omagh tragedy, who has most to fear from such an inquiry?"
Hoey's solicitor Peter Corrigan said Low Copy Number DNA testing had been "utterly discredited".
"We had to fight tooth and nail to access the material needed to expose the defects in this case," he said.
"At times many obstacles were put in our way but we got there with the assistance of the court and some of the best forensic expertise in the world."
By Barry McCaffrey
THERE was a deafening silence among the 200 people packed into courtroom 12 as Sean Hoey was led into the dock at 2.29pm to hear the verdict in the biggest murder trial in Northern Ireland's legal history.
In the public gallery the families of many of the 29 Omagh victims, who included a woman pregnant with twins, sat alongside Hoey's relatives and supporters.
Dressed in a jacket and open-necked shirt, the 38-year-old unemployed electrician bit his nails nervously as Mr Justice Weir took 20 minutes to read out the list of 58 charges against him, stretching over a dozen Real IRA attacks including the Omagh bombing.
At 3.04pm, the exact time that the Omagh bomb had exploded, the judge gave the first indication that the case against Hoey was about to collapse.
As he read out each line of his 24-page verdict it became clearer that the prosecution case had spectacularly failed through a combination of police officers' lies, flawed forensic evidence and a "slapdash" approach to protecting evidence.
At 3.55pm the judge ended the trial with the words: "I find Mr Hoey not guilty on each of the remaining counts on the indictment."
Hoey's family and supporters applauded and he was ushered away through a side door.
Outside it was senior PSNI officers who found themselves in the dock for the failed investigation.
Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who led the probe,was hurried away when Lawrence Rush, whose wife Libby was killed in the atrocity, challenged him to apologise for the failures in the case.
"I'm stressed but not over-disappointed," Mr Rush said.
"I wouldn't have liked the wrong man to be charged."
But he said: "It's devastating. It's a disaster the way that this investigation was held."
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed, expressed "deep disappointment".
"I sat through the trial for 56 days and every day you felt lower and lower," he said.
Of the police failures, he said: "When you hear it catalogued in one afternoon in the court, it beggars belief that such a thing could happen."
Highlighting the Omagh families' sense of disillusionment, Mr Gallagher said: "I remember speaking to Sir Ronnie Flanagan in the early days and saying to him that we don't want someone coming in here on very light evidence and then two years later having that conviction overturned, or having a retrial as we see in the [Colm] Murphy trial.
"We want somebody solidly convicted and we know of no reason why there should not have been solid convictions."
Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann died, said: "I'm flabbergasted, dumbfounded. I do not know what to think.
"All the resources over the last nine and a half years have not got us anywhere. Hoey has done four and a half years and I'm sure his compensation will be far greater than we had to fight and embarrass ourselves into getting."
Rita Hoey welcomed her son's acquittal and said he supported calls for a cross-border public inquiry into the bombing.
"As a mother, I would personally like to thank those from among the Omagh families who have all suffered immensely but eventually saw this as an injustice and had the moral conviction to speak out," she said.
"I want the world to know that my son Sean Hoey is innocent.
"The authorities north and south have held two separate trials but one witch-hunt.
"In both trials police officers have been exposed as lying through their teeth to secure convictions at any cost. Those very people, north and south, blocked at every turn a cross-border public inquiry.
"I want to ask the question regarding the Omagh tragedy, who has most to fear from such an inquiry?"
Hoey's solicitor Peter Corrigan said Low Copy Number DNA testing had been "utterly discredited".
"We had to fight tooth and nail to access the material needed to expose the defects in this case," he said.
"At times many obstacles were put in our way but we got there with the assistance of the court and some of the best forensic expertise in the world."
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0775
Published Date: 21-Dec-07
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