Omagh trial hears claim of altered evidence

Dates were altered on the label attached to evidence seized from the scene of a terrorist attack on a police station, the Omagh bomb trial heard today.

Lawyers for Sean Hoey, who allegedly murdered 29 people in the atrocity, also claimed the detonator bag was discovered in an ammunition box more than five years later.

Even though the package referred to a planned car bomb strike on Armagh Police Station, a Scenes of Crime Officer told Belfast Crown Court he could not confirm the wire and tape in it were from the same incident.

Under cross examination, James Johnston said the original date he had written on the brown bag which had contained the detonator from the May 1998 attack had been changed.

Mr Johnston, who put on surgical gloves to re-open and examine the parcel in the witness box, told Orlando Pownall QC, defending, he had no idea who would have tampered with the label.

He said: “No one else had control of the exhibits prior to them going to the laboratory.”

After the retired Scenes of Crime officer studied the contents, Mr Pownall told him: “In due course this court is going to hear that that brown bag was with a number of detonators in an ammunition box found in 2003, over five years after you had found and exhibited (it).

“Looking at the scraps you have in front of you, you can’t say that bit of wire and bit of tape was definitely the bit of wire and tape, part of the detonator you seized on May 17 1998.”

Mr Johnston replied: “I can’t say that.”

The attack in Armagh, where a controlled explosion was carried out on a stolen Toyota Carina packed with 500lb home made device, is one of a dozen Hoey has been accused of.

The electrician, from Molly Road, Jonesborough, south Armagh, denies a total of 58 terrorist-related charges, including the August 1998 attack on Omagh.

So far the trial has focused on bombings leading up to that Real IRA massacre.

A series of allegations about the poor handling of evidence have been made.

The trial continues tomorrow.