'Gardaí allowed Omagh bombers across border' - report

Relatives of the Omagh bombing victims have demanded a Europe-wide probe into new claims that senior gardaí officers allowed the device to go through.

A secret transcript allegedly exposes how high-ranking garda detectives were alerted to a bomb attack in Northern Ireland just 24 hours before the atrocity but decided to let the bombers across the border.

A master car thief who infiltrated the Real IRA, the dissident republican terrorist outfit behind the attack which killed 29 people, said the force wanted to protect him as an agent.

The man, who has since fled Ireland, is said to have warned the Republic: “Omagh is going to blow up in their faces.”

It is believed he has now entered into a witness protection scheme abroad, even though Police Service of Northern Ireland officers investigating the Omagh massacre have never questioned him.

But Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was among those murdered in the August 1998 outrage, said demands for a major examination of the Republic’s role in hunting down the bombers could no longer be resisted.

He told PA News: “It looks like the Irish Government is being obstructive, to say the least.

“They appear to have done nothing to notify their colleagues north of the border.”

The agent’s claims were made in a 54-page transcript of a covertly taped conversation with his garda handler, obtained by the Observer newspaper.

He said he gave the gardaí intelligence about a stolen car to be used in a bomb in Northern Ireland a day before Omagh, it is alleged.

“They (the Real IRA) had got a car and they (the garda) knew it was moving, they knew it was moving within 24 hours at that stage,” the informer claims on the tape.

The Real IRA mole is believed to have provided intelligence on nine different Real IRA bomb plots between February and August 1998.

He had organised the theft of cars for the dissident republican organisation which were then used to transport bombs and rockets into Northern Ireland.

Five attacks were foiled due to his information but four went ahead to maintain his credibility, it is alleged.

Mr Gallagher claimed the allegations were as serious as anything to emerge from the Canadian Judge Peter Cory’s probe into six murders across the Irish border shrouded in suspicion of security force collusion.

“How can they resist not giving us a public inquiry ?” he said. “We have seen revelation after revelation.

“We are also asking our three local MEPs to raise in the European Parliament that a member state appears to have not fully co-operated in the fight against terrorism.”

With some of the Omagh dead and injured coming from Spain, he added that the Spanish embassy should be contacted.

“Information has been withheld that could be important in the investigation into the death of two of their nationals.”