Decision on Omagh bombing appeal soon

A ruling is expected shortly on an appeal by Colm Murphy aimed at stopping his retrial on a charge connected with the Real IRA bomb in Omagh which killed 29 people in 1998.

The Special Criminal Court was told today that the Supreme Court heard Murphy’s appeal last October. Prosecution solicitor Mr Michael O’ Donovan said that judgment in that appeal is expected shortly.

He applied for a further remand for Murphy and the court remanded him on continuing bail until the end of April.

Murphy was freed on bail in 2005 after the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his conviction for conspiracy offences connected with the Real IRA bombing which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured more than 300 people in August 1998.

Murphy was jailed for 14 years by the Special Criminal Court in January 2002 for his alleged role in the Omagh bomb.

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 northern troubles.

But in January 2005, 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 judgment on Murphy.

During a 25-day trial in 2001 and 2002, Murphy, (aged 55), 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.