Omagh arrests a 'significant breakthrough'

A man and woman held by police investigating the Omagh bomb atrocity were also being questioned tonight about a series of other attacks by dissident republicans opposed to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Officers probing the single worst terrorist outrage in the 30 years of bloodshed ordered their detention after widening their inquires in a bid to bring the Real IRA killers to justice.

Up to 200 police and troops were involved in a major security swoop to seize the couple at a house in Jonesborough, south Armagh.

Senior security sources tonight confirmed the arrests represented a significant breakthrough in the five-year hunt.

But it was still unclear if charges are imminent. The pair are being interrogated at Gough Barracks, Armagh city, and can be held for up to 48 hours.

The arrests are unlikely to affect the £10m (€14.5m) High Court compensation claim by some of the families of the dead against five men they alleged were involved in the outrage.

Relatives claimed the scale of the south Armagh arrest operation indicated that security chiefs were acting on strong evidence, and do not believe their unprecedented civil action, which the British Government is backing with £800,000 (€1m) funding, will distract from any criminal proceedings.

It is understood the arrests are linked to one of the cars which is thought have been used at the time the 500lb bomb was transported through the west Tyrone countryside before being abandoned, killing 29 people, one of them a woman pregnant with twins, in August 1998.

One of the misleading bomb warnings which left police ushering hundreds of civilians into the path of the car bomb instead of away from lower Market Street was made from a telephone box in south Armagh.

Even though police in Northern Ireland and Gardaí have identified the men they suspect were responsible, nobody has been charged with any of the murders.

The alleged Real IRA leader at the time of Omagh, Michael McKevitt, 51, was jailed for 20 years last month for directing terrorism and another man, Colm Murphy, 51, was sentenced to 14 years for conspiring to cause an explosion. Both are from Dundalk.

Those two and three other men – Seamus Daly, 33, Castleblaney, Co Monaghan, Seamus McKenna, 49, Silverbridge, south Armagh, and Liam Campbell, 38, Dundalk - have been named in the relatives’ High Court civil action which is expected to go ahead next year.

McKevitt and Campbell, who is also being held in Portlaoise Prison on terrorist charges unconnected with Omagh, are to contest the case against them.

The Omagh legal team headed by the London solicitor Jason McCue had talks with Justice Minister Michael McDowell in Dublin today to press for transcripts of the two court cases involving McKevitt and Murphy to be handed over.

Relatives are also due to meet Mr McDowell in Dublin on Monday urging him to agree to Garda experts giving evidence in Belfast which is outside their jurisdiction.

They will be pressing him to publish the report of an internal inquiry over damaging claims that an officer warning terrorists were planning an attack in Northern Ireland on the day of the Omagh bombing was not passed on to security chiefs north of the border.

Stanley McCombe, whose wife Anne, 48, died in the bombing, said the authorities in Dublin and Belfast had been under intense pressure from the families.

He said: “Obviously this (the arrests) is something significant otherwise we would not have had an operation of this enormity. I’m very glad it has happened.”

The investigation had been extended to include up to 19 other terrorist attacks linked to dissident republicans in the months before Omagh. It is known they had one crucial piece of evidence relating to a particular bombing which they believe could be connected to at least one of the Real IRA men under suspicion.

Details have never been disclosed.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan, 21, was among those killed in the Real IRA attack, was not part of the delegation in Dublin for the talks with Mr McDowell.

But he said: “We have been waiting five years and these arrests have come all of a sudden. We are delighted things are starting to move forward.

“It’s early days but obviously the police felt they had sufficient evidence which was strong enough to arrest these individuals.”

Mr McCue who was accompanied at his Dublin talks with Lord Brennan also insisted there would be no let-up in the pressure on the authorities’ co-operation with the families.

But he urged caution over the arrests.

He said: “You have got to remember that after the bombing there were a lot of arrests. It is charges, charges and prosecutions.”

Mr McCue said he saw no legal impediment to members of the Irish police force working against terrorism to cross the border into Northern Ireland.

He declared: “I think if people are out to fight terrorism then a stroll across the border, if that be it, is what is necessary.

“If the Garda are on your side it is extremely important.”