OMAGH FAMILIES DEMAND JUDICIAL INQUIRY DURING MEETING WITH MPS
Omagh families demand judicial inquiry during meeting with MPs
By Michael McHugh PA
THE intelligence agencies are holding back in their pursuit of those behind the Omagh bomb, a grieving father alleged yesterday. Michael Gallagher said the security forces had fallen short in their effort to bring Real IRA members behind the death of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, to justice. He demanded a cross-border public inquiry into the 1998 atrocity, in which his son Aiden was killed, during a Stormont meeting with MPs. "Let's try and put the people in jail that committed the atrocity. I think that intelligence, the intelligence agencies are not using the information that they have as vigorously as they could in this country," he said. He told Westminster's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, sitting at Stormont, that over the past five years more than 40 al-Qaida and Islamist terrorists have been put in jail for planning or assisting terrorist acts. He used prosecutions after the July 2005 London bombings as an example. "With the Omagh intelligence there's so many discrepancies here that we are at a loss as to why these bombers and the people associated with them were not put in jail," he said. A recent Panorama programme revealed the British Government Communications Headquarters were recording mobile phone exchanges between the Omagh bombers on the day of the attack. A report from Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson avoided holding any branch of the intelligence services to account for the fact that the detectives were never told that intercepts existed and that the telephone numbers of some of the bombers were known. "They could have been passed at the earliest possible stage to the senior investigating officer," Mr Gallagher said. "It took the Royal Ulster Constabulary almost nine months of trawling through millions of telephone billing records in order to achieve the telephone numbers that - if the intelligence services had cooperated - policemen let it be RUC or Garda, could literally have put their hand on the shoulder of the people on that very night." Sean Hoey, a Co Armagh electrician, has been cleared of responsibility for the bombing at Omagh. Mr Gallagher said: "The families need closure. What we have is a catalogue of failings and shortcomings over the last 10 years and that has to be addressed in a proper and transparent way. "The only way that can be done is engaging in a judicial framework."
By Michael McHugh PA
THE intelligence agencies are holding back in their pursuit of those behind the Omagh bomb, a grieving father alleged yesterday. Michael Gallagher said the security forces had fallen short in their effort to bring Real IRA members behind the death of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, to justice. He demanded a cross-border public inquiry into the 1998 atrocity, in which his son Aiden was killed, during a Stormont meeting with MPs. "Let's try and put the people in jail that committed the atrocity. I think that intelligence, the intelligence agencies are not using the information that they have as vigorously as they could in this country," he said. He told Westminster's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, sitting at Stormont, that over the past five years more than 40 al-Qaida and Islamist terrorists have been put in jail for planning or assisting terrorist acts. He used prosecutions after the July 2005 London bombings as an example. "With the Omagh intelligence there's so many discrepancies here that we are at a loss as to why these bombers and the people associated with them were not put in jail," he said. A recent Panorama programme revealed the British Government Communications Headquarters were recording mobile phone exchanges between the Omagh bombers on the day of the attack. A report from Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson avoided holding any branch of the intelligence services to account for the fact that the detectives were never told that intercepts existed and that the telephone numbers of some of the bombers were known. "They could have been passed at the earliest possible stage to the senior investigating officer," Mr Gallagher said. "It took the Royal Ulster Constabulary almost nine months of trawling through millions of telephone billing records in order to achieve the telephone numbers that - if the intelligence services had cooperated - policemen let it be RUC or Garda, could literally have put their hand on the shoulder of the people on that very night." Sean Hoey, a Co Armagh electrician, has been cleared of responsibility for the bombing at Omagh. Mr Gallagher said: "The families need closure. What we have is a catalogue of failings and shortcomings over the last 10 years and that has to be addressed in a proper and transparent way. "The only way that can be done is engaging in a judicial framework."
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0994
Published Date: 17-Mar-09
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