Omagh spy ‘should testify by video link’

FBI SPY David Rupert’s evidence in the landmark civil action against five men suspected of the Omagh bombing should be given from the United States to protect his life, a court heard yesterday.

With the trial of the alleged terrorists behind the atrocity which claimed 29 lives provisionally fixed for January next year, lawyers for the victims’ families urged a High Court judge to allow the key witness to testify using a video link.

Lord Brennan QC told how Rupert, the trucking company boss turned agent who helped clinch the 20-year sentence handed out to Michael McEvitt for directing terrorism, had placed huge pressures on the security services during the Real IRA boss’s trial in Dublin last year.

With the spy set to give evidence on the families’ behalf, he said: “David Rupert’s involvement in that trial led to the most elaborate security measures, which represented a great strain on security personnel services.”

The preliminary hearing at the High Court in Belfast was to set out a timetable for the unprecedented bid to sue for £10 million the men who allegedly carried out the August 1998 massacre. No one has ever been convicted for the murders, but the families of the dead and injured launched a civil action against those they blame for the bombing.

As well as McEvitt, Seamus Daly, Seamus McKenna, Liam Campbell and Colm Murphy are all being sued by the Omagh Victims Civil Action Group.

But only lawyers for three of the men, McEvitt, Campbell and McKenna, appeared in court to defend the case. Both McEvitt and Campbell have lodged denials to any involvement.

Following the hour-long hearing Mr Justice Higgins set a provisional date of January 17 next year for the full hearing to begin. But the case will be reviewed again in two months’ time.