'Terror plot detonator changed after expert examination'

A detonator used in a terrorist plot underwent unexplained changes after it was first examined, the Omagh bomb trial heard today.

As lawyers representing Sean Hoey, 37, the man accused of murdering 29 people in the atrocity, prepared to open their case, they recalled a forensic scientist who studied the device found after a separate attack blamed on the south Armagh electrician.

Orlando Pownall QC asked Gordon McMillen to give Belfast Crown Court a reason for significant differences in the length of wire protruding from a detonator attached to 500lb of home-made explosives planted near a police station in May 1998.

Photographs appeared to show this had been extended by up to three times from when Mr McMillen first examined the device months after the terrorists’ strike in Armagh was foiled to when a new analysis was made late last year.

Mr Pownall told the forensic expert: “You have got no explanation for why about one and a half centimetres of wire is protruding in the photographs at the end of last year and significantly less in the photographs taken at the same time.”

Mr McMillen agreed with his assessment, replying: “I have no explanation.”

Wrongly labelled bomb exhibits has been one of the key issues since Hoey, of Molly Road, Jonesborough, went on trial accused of a series of dissident republican terrorist offences, including the August 1998 Real IRA outrage in Omagh.

As he returned to the dock on day 52 of the case to face a total of 56 charges, with prosecutors using voice analysis and DNA profiling in a bid to link him to a series of bomb plots, his defence team was expected to begin putting its case.

Hoey denies all the charges against him, and experts have already discredited the DNA forensic technique used to link him to a number of incidents.