Families set for court as Omagh inquiry ruled out

Families of Omagh bomb victims have vowed to take the British government to court after branding its decision to rule out a public inquiry into the attack as a feeble bid to hide from the truth.

Relatives made the defiant pledge to take judicial review proceedings after Northern secretary Theresa Villiers said she did not believe there were sufficient grounds to justify a state-commissioned independent probe into the 1998 Real IRA bombing.

The dissident republican attack, which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured more than 200, was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles and inflicted the greatest loss of life in a single terrorist incident.

The event is dogged by controversy with long-standing allegations that intelligence and investigative failures by authorities on both sides of the border allowed the bombers to both carry out the crime and get away with it.

Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann was killed in the attack, said the anger he felt at the government’s decision would drive him onward as the families proceeded withlegal action. “If they want to try and hide the truth about Omagh, they can,” he said.

“But we’ll flush them out at the end of the day. There are no hiding places. It’s a democratic country and people have to know the truth.”

Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden died in the Aug 1998 blast,said: “We’ll do our talking in court.”

Omagh was bombed just months after politicians in the North signed thehistoric Good Friday peace accord that led to power-sharing at Stormont.

While nobody has been criminally convicted of the crime, four republicans werefound liable for the atrocity in a landmark civil case taken by some of the bereaved relatives and ordered to pay £1.6m compensation.

Last month, families who belong to the Omagh Support and Self-Help Groupoutlined details of an independent report they had commissioned into allegedintelligence failings in the lead-up to the atrocity and with the subsequentcriminal investigations.

They had handed the document to the authorities in London and Dublin a year previously and complained vociferously at the length of time the respectivegovernments had taken to respond.

Mr Gallagher said he was “disappointed but not surprised” that, ultimately, the British government had now come back with a negative response.

Ms Villiers said it was not an easy decision to make and all views had been carefully considered.

She said a current investigation into elements of the incident by the NorthernIreland Police Ombudsman was the best way to proceed.

“I do not believe that there are sufficient grounds to justify a further review or inquiry above and beyond those that have already taken place or are ongoing,” she said.

Not all of the Omagh families are involved in the campaign for an inquiry.

But both Mr Gallagher and Mr McCombe questioned the rationale of thegovernment’s claims that an inquiry would cause trauma to some of the bereaved.

“The Omagh bomb could have been prevented and yet we have the weakest ofexcuses this morning from the secretary of state such as some of the familiesare against a public inquiry because they would be traumatised,” Mr Gallagher said.

“Of course we recognise that people move forward at different levels but doesthat mean to say that because there are some of us who want justice and truththat we should be denied that because others don’t?”

Mr McCombe added: “But when you get the news it makes you angry, it makes you angry the feeble excuse that Theresa Villiers and her die-hard associates came up with, that it would be very harrowing on other members of the families.

“The way I look at it is: Why should anyone else deny me the truth about why my wife was murdered?”