Omagh: Murphy further remanded

Colm Murphy, whose conviction for an offence connected with the Omagh bombing in 1998 was quashed, was further remanded until next October, when he appeared briefly at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin today.

Prosecution solicitor Mr Denis Butler told the court that he was seeking a remand in Murphy's case until October 4 next.

Murphy's solicitor, Mr Michael Farrell, expressed some concern about the length of time a decision in the case was taking, but in the circumstances he agreed to the adjournment.

The court remanded Murphy on continuing bail until October 4.

Murphy was freed on bail last January after he signed a bail bond, lodging €50,000 in cash with the court, agreeing to sign on daily at Dundalk garda station, to reside at Plaster, Mountpleasant , Dundalk and not to apply for a passport.

Murphy was jailed for 14 years by the Special Criminal Court in January 2002 for playing a role in the Omagh bomb which killed 29 people, including a mother pregnant with twins, and injured over 300 in 1998.

He was the first person to be convicted in either the Republic or Northern Ireland in connection with the Real IRA bombing, the worst terrorist atrocity in the history of the thirty years of the troubles.

But in January the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial after finding that the court of trial had failed to give proper regard to altered garda interview notes and that there had been "an invasion of the presumption of innocence" in the judgement on Murphy.

During a 25-day trial in 2001 and 2002, Murphy, (aged 52), a father of four, building contractor and publican who is a native of Co Armagh with an address at Jordan's Corner, Ravensdale, Co Louth had pleaded not guilty to conspiring in Dundalk with another person not before the court to cause an explosion in the State or elsewhere between August 13 and 16, 1998.