UH/0921

Friday verdict in Omagh bomb case
BY JOHN McCUSKER

JUDGES are expected to give their verdict on Friday in the trial of the only man charged in connection with the Omagh bomb attack.
It is anticipated that Dublin Special Criminal Court will rule in the case of 49-year-old Colm Murphy, from Ravensdale, Dundalk, who faces charges of conspiracy in relation to the August 1998 atrocity.
The court was adjourned on the 25th day of the trial following closing submissions from Murphy's counsel, Michael O'Higgins SC.
The defendant was remanded on continuing bail of £126,973 until Friday. Murphy, a building contractor and publican who is a native of Co. Armagh, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring in Dundalk with another person not before the court to cause an explosion between August 13 and 16, 1998.
Murphy was arrested by officers in February 1999 and the court has heard that his mobile telephone was tracked during the journey from Dundalk to Omagh and back again on the day of the bombing.
The prosecution has alleged that the defendant lent his mobile phone and another he obtained from Terence Morgan to the people who planted the Omagh bomb. Morgan gave evidence last November that he had lent his mobile phone to Murphy, but last Friday he retracted that evidence and said he had not and had been put under pressure to give evidence.
Morgan, a second cousin of the accused, initially told gardai that he had handed a mobile to Murphy on the weekend of the blast. He repeated the claim in court in November. But this week he said he had implicated the accused under duress.
Senior counsel Peter Charleton told the three judges that a letter had been sent to the chief prosecution solicitor on January 8 from Morgan's legal team stating that their client wished to retract his statement.
Reading from the letter, Mr Charleton said: "Where in his statement he states that he lent his mobile phone to Colm Murphy is incorrect and untrue. At the time he was under duress by the gardai to make a statement."
The letter said evidence Morgan had given in November "is not true, he wants to retract it immediately." The letter also explained that Morgan, a bricklayer working for Murphy at the time of the bombing, was, and still is, on medication.
Questioned by Peter Charleton SC, Morgan told the court that threats made by gardai led him to make the claim that he had given the mobile phone to the accused.