Omagh role for Police Ombudsman

Part of the Omagh bomb inquiry is to be investigated by Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan, it was revealed tonight.

Her office is to probe the circumstances surrounding an anonymous telephone call which warned of an attack to take place in the Tyrone town on the day of the atrocity.

The Ombudsman will be seeking details after it emerged that a former Special Branch officer is to be interviewed by detectives attempting to establish the source of the call.

It was made to police on August 4, l998, 11 days before the bombing, but the information was never passed on to officers on the ground.

Relatives of some of the 29 people killed, which included a mother pregnant with twins, had urged the Ombudsman to carry out her own investigation into the phone call.

Four years ago she issued a damning report of the investigation by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and claimed the leadership and judgment of the then Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan was seriously flawed, an allegation he rejected amid a monumental row.

Her spokesman confirmed tonight that her officers, headed up by executive director Dave Wood were back on the case.

He said: “The Police Ombudsman office has received a complaint about the circumstances surrounding the call. The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) team investigating the bomb has also raised this issue with us.

“The Police Ombudsman’s office is now investigating all the circumstances relating to this matter.”

The Special Branch officer has already been questioned as part of an investigation unrelated to the Omagh inquiry, but it is not known if he has yet been interviewed in an attempt to trace the source of the telephone call.

He has been transferred from Special Branch to other policing duties.

A spokesperson for the PSNI said tonight: “As there is an Ombudsman investigation in this area, we will be making no further comment.”

A male caller had contacted the CID office in Omagh at 10am on August 4, 1998 when he spoke to a detective constable.

He named two men whom he claimed would be bringing across the Irish border four dismantled AK47 rifles and two rocket launchers belonging to the Continuity IRA which he said, would be used in an attack on police in Omagh on August 15.

At the time, the CID officer believed the caller to be genuine, briefed the senior detective on duty and then travelled to Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, where he informed Special Branch officers. They allegedly told him there was nothing in the information and that the two men named were ordinary criminals.

However, one of the officers asked to be present in the Special Branch office in Omagh the next day for a second call. It never came.

The August 4 call and the text of the information was never registered on the database which was set up for the huge investigation and it was not until two years later during a review of the inquiry by the Royal Ulster Constabulary that officers in Omagh became aware it had been made.

But the source was never identified.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was among those killed, said tonight the authorities in Dublin should also carry out a similar investigation after claims the gardaí did not act on warning of a planned Real IRA attack in Northern Ireland at the time of Omagh.

He said: “We do not wish this (Ombudsman’s) inquiry to become a political football. All politicians should support the families, the Ombudsman’s office and the police inquiry team to establish the truth of what happened in Omagh before, on and after August 15 so that we can start to move forward.

“This is a very limited inquiry and there are issues, north and south of the border, that need to be fully investigated. It’s for this reason we need a full cross border public inquiry.

“The Ombudsman’s office has lived up to the confidence placed in it by the families in the past. We will watch with interest the outcome of this inquiry.”