Omagh bomb probe arrests condemned as ‘over the top’

A LARGE-SCALE police and army operation to arrest a couple for questioning in connection with the Omagh bombing has been branded as “over the top” by a councillor who lives nearby.

Packie McDonald, a Sinn Féin councillor who knows the couple, also expressed surprise about the arrest of the woman as he believed she had “no political views”.

Two hundred police and soldiers were transported largely by helicopter into the South Armagh village of Jonesborough early on Tuesday morning.

A husband and wife living in a mobile home next to their partially built house were arrested. A van was taken away for forensic examination along with items from the mobile home.

Mr McDonald, who represents the Slieve Gullion area, said he suspected the operation was a “media event”. He said the home was in a remote area at the side of the mountain and at 7am in the morning there was “absolutely no danger of a crowd gathering”.

The councillor said that while the van was taken away for examination, he was quite certain the arrested man did not own it five years ago when the Omagh blast happened. The couple were last night still being questioned at Gough Barracks in Armagh City about the Omagh bomb and other attacks by dissident republicans.

While there have been more than 30 arrests by detectives on both sides of the border investigating the August, 1998, outrage, there have been none in the North since leadership of the PSNI team was changed following publication last November of a damning report on the handling of the probe.

This has led some commentators to describe the arrests as significant, as it’s believed the new team would not move unless they had some hard evidence and, therefore, a significant chance charges will follow. They can be held for up to seven days on foot of a High Court order following the first 48-hours.

The man has been questioned before about the bombing, the single worst atrocity in the 30-year history of violence in the North. Twenty-nine people, including a pregnant woman expecting twins, died.

The couple are also being quizzed about a series of other attacks, including bombings in Lisburn, Co Antrim, and Newry and Banbridge, Co Down, two weeks before the Omagh attack.

It is understood the arrests are linked to one of the cars which is thought to have been used at the time the 500lb bomb was transported through the West Tyrone countryside before being abandoned in the county town.

Relatives of the victims are to meet Justice Minister Michael McDowell in Dublin on Monday. They will press him to publish the report of an internal inquiry into damaging claims that a warning terrorists were planning an attack in the North on the day of the Omagh bombing was not passed on to security chiefs north of the border.