HOEY DEFENCE QUESTIONS RELIABITY OF EVIDENCE
HOEY DEFENCE QUESTIONS RELIABILITY OF EVIDENCE
THE barrister acting for the defence of Sean Gerard Hoey, the only man to face murder charges in relation to the 1998 Omagh bombing, has called into question the integrity of some of the evidence collected by police in the wake of other bomb attacks of which Hoey also stands accused.
Orlando Pownall QC, who earlier this month had asked for the trial to be adjourned due to his ill health, was cross-examining scenes of crime officer, Mrs Fiona Cooper, on the second day of the trial at Belfast Crown Court.
He put it to her that when she attended the scene of a mortar attack at Forkhill RUC station in March 1998, Mrs Cooper had not considered that the items recovered from the scene, including timer power units, might be sent for DNA analysis.
Mrs Cooper admitted that she did not consider the potential for DNA evidence because the "technology for low copy number DNA was not available at the time". She said her principal concern had been the collection of fingerprints, fibre evidence and "other trace evidence".
She refuted suggestions by Mr Pownall that items taken from the scene were not properly bagged and sealed, insisting they "were placed in bags at Forkhill but they were properly sealed and labelled at Bessbrook".
When asked by Diplock judge, Mr Justice Weir why the timer power unit was not photographed, Mrs Cooper told him it "must've been overlooked".
Hoey, a 37-year-old electrician from Jonesborough, Co. Armagh, faces a total of 58 terror charges, all of which he denies.
On the opening day of his trial on Monday, prosecution barrister, Mr Gordon Kerr QC, said that the prosecution would use expert forensic evidence, DNA and bomb making patterns to link Hoey to the Omagh atrocity as well as a litany of other attacks, including five other bombings, four bomb conspiracies, six murder conspiracies and the possession of explosives, including timer power units, mortar bombs and bombs.
Hoey sat impassively in the dock, flanked by security guards, as the names of the 29 Omagh victims - the oldest 65, the youngest just 18 months - were read out in court 12 at Laganside Courts in Belfast.
The barrister said that the warnings given prior to the fatal blast were "wrong and so lacking in detail as to be meaningless", and explained that the court would also hear evidence from police officers who were attempting to evacuate the town when the bomb exploded.
He said: "All of them were in position when the explosion occurred and will describe the horrific injuries that they observed and the assistance that they gave to the injured people.
"It will be the prosecution case that the warnings given were wrong and so lacking in detail as to be meaningless. In fact, it will be submitted that it is proper to infer that the warnings, as given, were such as to make it inevitable that any evacuation was likely to be away from the courthouse, and given the topography, the police were going to evacuate the area they did, and that inevitably placed the public present on that day in the area where the bomb had been planted."
He continued: "The court will be asked to compare the warnings given in the Omagh case with those given using the same code word in two other town centre car bombs in Lisburn and Banbridge.
"In both these cases, the premises at which the bombs had been left were correctly identified and the type of car the bomb was contained in was also given. The prosecution will say that if the bombers genuinely wished to avoid the certain deaths and injury which they knew would occur by placing a large car bomb on a busy shopping street, they could easily have given the description of the vehicle and the accurate description of its location, as it been done before. In fact they did neither," he said. At hearing.
THE barrister acting for the defence of Sean Gerard Hoey, the only man to face murder charges in relation to the 1998 Omagh bombing, has called into question the integrity of some of the evidence collected by police in the wake of other bomb attacks of which Hoey also stands accused.
Orlando Pownall QC, who earlier this month had asked for the trial to be adjourned due to his ill health, was cross-examining scenes of crime officer, Mrs Fiona Cooper, on the second day of the trial at Belfast Crown Court.
He put it to her that when she attended the scene of a mortar attack at Forkhill RUC station in March 1998, Mrs Cooper had not considered that the items recovered from the scene, including timer power units, might be sent for DNA analysis.
Mrs Cooper admitted that she did not consider the potential for DNA evidence because the "technology for low copy number DNA was not available at the time". She said her principal concern had been the collection of fingerprints, fibre evidence and "other trace evidence".
She refuted suggestions by Mr Pownall that items taken from the scene were not properly bagged and sealed, insisting they "were placed in bags at Forkhill but they were properly sealed and labelled at Bessbrook".
When asked by Diplock judge, Mr Justice Weir why the timer power unit was not photographed, Mrs Cooper told him it "must've been overlooked".
Hoey, a 37-year-old electrician from Jonesborough, Co. Armagh, faces a total of 58 terror charges, all of which he denies.
On the opening day of his trial on Monday, prosecution barrister, Mr Gordon Kerr QC, said that the prosecution would use expert forensic evidence, DNA and bomb making patterns to link Hoey to the Omagh atrocity as well as a litany of other attacks, including five other bombings, four bomb conspiracies, six murder conspiracies and the possession of explosives, including timer power units, mortar bombs and bombs.
Hoey sat impassively in the dock, flanked by security guards, as the names of the 29 Omagh victims - the oldest 65, the youngest just 18 months - were read out in court 12 at Laganside Courts in Belfast.
The barrister said that the warnings given prior to the fatal blast were "wrong and so lacking in detail as to be meaningless", and explained that the court would also hear evidence from police officers who were attempting to evacuate the town when the bomb exploded.
He said: "All of them were in position when the explosion occurred and will describe the horrific injuries that they observed and the assistance that they gave to the injured people.
"It will be the prosecution case that the warnings given were wrong and so lacking in detail as to be meaningless. In fact, it will be submitted that it is proper to infer that the warnings, as given, were such as to make it inevitable that any evacuation was likely to be away from the courthouse, and given the topography, the police were going to evacuate the area they did, and that inevitably placed the public present on that day in the area where the bomb had been planted."
He continued: "The court will be asked to compare the warnings given in the Omagh case with those given using the same code word in two other town centre car bombs in Lisburn and Banbridge.
"In both these cases, the premises at which the bombs had been left were correctly identified and the type of car the bomb was contained in was also given. The prosecution will say that if the bombers genuinely wished to avoid the certain deaths and injury which they knew would occur by placing a large car bomb on a busy shopping street, they could easily have given the description of the vehicle and the accurate description of its location, as it been done before. In fact they did neither," he said. At hearing.
Further Information
Publisher: TYRONE CONSTITUTION
Ref: TC/1849
Published Date: 28-Sep-06
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