Secret letters sent to on-the-run suspects in Northern Ireland did not amount to “immunity, exemption or amnesty from arrest”, the British Government insisted today.

A forum of politicians is to call on the British government to release secret files on the Real IRA suspects behind the Omagh bombing.

Northern Ireland‘s Police Ombudsman was today labelled a waste of money after an Ulster Unionist peer claimed the office had secured only four successful convictions over the past four years.