Omagh accused remanded on bail

A man whose conviction for an offence connected with the Omagh bombing in 1998 was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal was remanded on continuing bail until next January, at the Special Criminal Court today.

The trial of Colm Murphy (aged 52), a native of Co Armagh with an address at Jordan’s Corner, Ravensdale, Co Louth, was put off pending the outcome of another trial at the Circuit Criminal Court.

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

In January this year, 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”.

He walked free on bail last January after lodging €50,000 in cash with the court, agreeing to sign on daily at Dundalk Garda Station and not to apply for a passport.

The court remanded Murphy on continuing bail until January 11, 2006, when the case is up for mention.

Murphy 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 30-year-history of the troubles.

During a 25-day trial in 2001 and 2002, Murphy, a father of four and a building contractor and publican, 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.