Furious families slam police handling of case and call for inquiry

FURIOUS families of the Omagh victims rounded on the police last night following the not guilty verdict in the Omagh bomb trial.

Calls were also repeated for a cross-border inquiry into the mass murder for which nobody has been convicted.

Former police chief Ronnie Flanagan was singled out for blame by the father of a 12-year-old boy killed in the bombing.

English solicitor Victor Barker, whose son James was among those died, said it was because of the “appalling inefficiency” of Ronnie Flanagan and the original investigation that a conviction had not been secured.

Mr Flanagan is now head of the Inspectorate of Constabulary at Britain’s Home Office.

Mr Barker said: “He said he would fall on his sword if anything was wrong with this investigation — I will give him the sword.”

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan died in the bombing, said a cross-border inquiry must be held. The case, he said, had been a disaster for the Omagh families.

“Now both governments, given what we have experienced today and over the last nine-and-a- half years, cannot refuse the families a cross-border public inquiry.”

Hitting out at the police handling of the case he said: “I sat through the trial for 56 days and every day you felt lower and lower... There will be at least 10 people who will be sitting at their Christmas dinner this year who were involved in the Omagh bomb.”

Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann, 48, was another of the victims, said he was shocked.

“I’m flabbergasted, dumbfounded. I do not know what to think. All the resources over the last nine-and-a-half years have not got us anywhere. Hoey has done four-and-a-half years and I’m sure his compensation will be far greater than we had to fight and embarrass ourselves into getting,” he said.

The North’s Public Prosecution Service defended its decision to prosecute Sean Hoey. “The decision to prosecute Sean Hoey was made following a careful analysis of the available evidence.

“It was concluded the evidence was sufficient to provide a reasonable prospect of obtaining a conviction,” said a prosection service statement.

“That evidence has properly been the subject of rigorous scrutiny in the course of the trial.”

Careful consideration would be given to what the judge had said, it said.