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Bomb case adjourned as Dublin judge falls ill
BY DIARMUID MACDERMOTT AND JOHN McCUSKER

THE trial of the only man charged in connection with the Omagh bombing was postponed until after Christmas when one of the three judges hearing the case fell ill.
Justice Mary O'Halloran SC was admitted to hospital last weekend forcing the Dublin Special Criminal Court trial of Colm Murphy into an adjournment.
Murphy 49, a father of four, building contractor and publican who is a native of Co. Armagh with an address at Jordan's Corner, Ravensdale, Co. Louth, denies conspiring in Dundalk with another person not before the court to cause an explosion in the State or elsewhere between August 13 and 16 1998.
He remains on continuing bail of £50,000.
Earlier in the trial, an intelligence analyst with the Northern Ireland Office told the Special Criminal Court in Dublin that she faxed details of mobile phone traffic on the day of a bomb attack in Banbridge in August, 1998 to a garda.
Lisa Purnell said she sent a chart and description of a cell site to Detective Sergeant John Costello in February l999 after she had discussed the mobile phone traffic with him by phone. She said it related to the Banbridge bomb and a mobile phone used by Colm Murphy, the only man charged in connection with the Omagh bomb.
She said that Murphy's mobile phone was active on cell sites around Banbridge on the day of the bombing there.
Ms Purnell admitted under cross examination by Murphy's counsel Michael O' Higgins SC that she "wasn't supposed to be talking" to Det. Sgt Costello because she was working for the RUC at the time. She added "I should have gone through the people I was working for."
The prosecution is alleging that Mr Murphy "lent aid" to the people who planted the Omagh bomb. Earlier in the trial Detective Garda James B. Hanley told the court that Murphy had admitted in interviews that he lent his mobile phone to known republicans, knowing it would be used for moving bombs.
The court has heard detailed evidence of mobile phone traffic around Omagh and Dundalk on the day of the bombing. Evidence was given that 11 calls were made to and from a mobile phone belonging to Murphy on August 15,1998, the day of the bombing. Six of the calls were routed through mobile phone masts on the Vodafone network in Co. Tyrone and five were routed on the Eircell network south of the border.
The defence is challenging the admissibility of evidence relating to mobile phones.
Ms Purnell said that in February, 1999, she was an intelligence analyst working for the Northern Ireland Office "on loan to the RUC".
She said she had made a statement to gardai at Phoenix Park in June this year and said she had no notes with her when she made the statement. She said that in February, 1999, her office was in Stormont but her fax heading was RUC Headquarters at Knock Road in Belfast. Since then she had changed jobs completely and she had no paperwork relating to the events of February 1999. "Everything I had went back to the RUC," she said.
Ms Purnell told Mr O'Higgins that she knew Murphy was in custody in February 1999, because Det. Sgt Costello told her when she was in touch with him. She admitted she had faxed a document entitled "Banbridge bomb Vodafone cell site analysis" to Det. Sgt Costello at 9.40pm on February 22nd 1999.
Detective Chief Superintendent Dermot Jennings of Garda Headquarters told the court that he requested detai's relating to certain mobile phones from Eircell in December, 1998, after he was requested to do so by the garda team investigating the Omagh bomb. Cross-examined by Richard Humphreys BL for the defence, the Det. Chief Supt Jennings said he had made possibly more than 100 similar requests in connection with the Omagh investigation.