Unfinished business - Too many festering suspicions

AFTER a decade the terrible emptiness and heartbreak caused by the troubles’ most appalling atrocity are as real as they were the summer’s day they were inflicted.

The carnage, in Omagh on August 15, 1998, took 31 lives and left marks that are still troubling today. A recent manifestation of that pain was seen just last month when some victims’ families felt unable to attend official ceremonies to mark the murders.

That pain will be exacerbated by tonight’s BBC Panorama programme, which will claim that British intelligence recorded the Real IRA bombers’ phone calls as they drove into the Tyrone town on the day of the attack. The allegations have led to renewed calls for an inquiry into the bombing and police investigations.

Images from that day of bombed streets and rescue workers caked in blood and dust sustain an impression of mayhem that resonates across the decade that has passed since then. There is a well-known picture of a happy, sun-basked father carrying a child taken just beside the car carrying the bomb moments before it went off. It has become one of the defining images of the terrible pointlessness of that period in our history.

It is nearly impossible to say that one terrorist bloodbath is more awful than another. It is very difficult to say if the degree of savagery is definable or even relevant but a series of events before and after Omagh have put this mass murder in a category all of its own.

It was carried out by dissident republicans — a strangely neutral term for mass murderers — after the Good Friday peace deal had been signed. The 500-pound bomb went off just as we began to hope that real peace was a possibility.

Despite investigations by several police forces nobody has been convicted, so there remains a powerful sense that justice has not been done and that official society has failed the victims and their families. The very families who have opened civil proceedings against those they hold responsible.

Last December PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde said it is highly unlikely anyone will be convicted unless those who know who did it are prepared to stand up in court and identify them. Six years earlier the then Northern Ireland police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, sparked controversy after her investigation into claims intelligence warnings on Omagh were not handled properly. Her report, published in December, 2001, found the RUC had prior knowledge of some form of attack and questioned the leadership of chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

Omagh is by no means the only tragedy from that sad time that represents unfinished business. There are many others mired in rumour and counter claim of shadowy security force involvement. There are claims of collusion, that security forces turned a blind eye when they should have intervened. There are even claims garda officers played a part in the murder of two RUC officers.

The Panorama conclusions make calls for an inquiry harder to reject. Even if it was only to help in convicting those responsible for 31 deaths it would be justified. However, the added suggestions that the deaths could have been prevented make it very hard to see how one can be avoided. A continued refusal to hold one can only give credence to the claims — right or wrong — that the security forces have a case to answer.

The Omagh bombing and all that surrounds it remain a boil waiting to be lanced.