A Massacre Of The Innocents

Six families made legal history as they embarked on a final attempt to win justice against the terrorist group The Real IRA .
ten years after 29 people - and unborn twins - were murdered by a 500lb car bomb in the market town, the relatives heard the outrage described as "a massacre of the innocents".

Their QC, Lord Brennan, launching their landmark £10million damages bid against five men they say were responsible for Northern Ireland's biggest single loss of life in the Troubles : "It was one of the most infamous terrorist atrocities in the history of this island."

He accused the five men of "cowardice and inhumanity" but warned: "This is a civil claim that is unprecedented, certainly in the UK and probably throughout the world.

"For the first time victims of terrorists are suing the alleged perpetrators for damages.

For the first time, private citizens are confronting terrorists in our courts."

Lord Brennan said the case had been brought by a number of Omagh families two who had lost wives, two bereaved by the loss of a son or daughter, two who were claiming for physical injuries and suffered psychological damage.

He said they were seeking damages against the five men. If successful, any award would be relentlessly enforced and they would seek money from the Real IRA, the 32-county sovereignty movement- its alleged political wing and the Irish Prisoners Welfare Organisation, as well as the five men.

He said some of the Omagh families or victims had not joined in the action, some had joined but left.

But the six families who brought the case to court "never faltered in their resolve or determination to pursue this to the end".

He said that if the case was successful it would send out the message that "every terrorist will have to live in fear that their assets, their homes, their belongings may be taken from them".

The QC accused the five Real IRA godfather Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Seamus Daly, Colm Murphy and Seamus McKenna of trying to stop the families "getting to the truth".

"The Real IRA and its members, in which we include McKevitt, Campbell, Daly, McKenna and Murphy, could never have contemplated families could bring civil actions against terrorists to a court in this country," he said.

Among the families on the public benches were Mark Breslin, who lost his 43-year-old wife Geraldine.

Michael Gallagher, figurehead and spokesman for the Omagh families support group, who lost his son Aidan, 21, was also present, sitting alongside Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann, 48, died in the slaughter.

Godfrey and Ann Wilson, whose daughter Lorraine, 15, died while on her Saturday job as a volunteer in an Oxfam shop, were among the families.

English solicitor Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son James died, was also there, although he is not one of the six families involved in taking the action.

Lord Brennan said he would produce forensic evidence, mobile phone records, and evidence from an FBI double-agent to prove their case.

All five men deny the allegations but the QC said all of them were convicted terrorists living in and around Dundalk in the Irish republic.

Listing the five's convictions, he said McKevitt, 58, had received 20 years in the Irish courts for directing terrorism. He is following events in court by videolink from his prison in the Republic.

Campbell, 43, had received five years for membership of an illegal organisation.

Daly, whom Lord Brennan described as a Real IRA foot soldier, had been sentenced to three and a half years for a similar offence in 2004 in the Irish Republic.

McKenna, described as another RIRA foot soldier, had been jailed for six years for terrorist explosive offences in the same year.

Lord Brennan described McKevitt as a leader of the Real IRA and Campbell his number two and a member of the group's Army Council.

Murphy, 56 sentenced to 14 years in 2002 for conspiring to cause explosions but later having his conviction quashed and awaiting a retrial was a member of the Continuity IRA which Lord Brennan said played a part in the Omagh bombing.

All but Campbell are defending the action on legal aid. Lawyers for the other four described as "utterly prejudicial" the use of the word "terrorist" to describe them by Lord Brennan.

Police investigating the bombing sifted through five million phone calls made before and after the attack, the judge was told.

Mobile phone records and phone mast information provide minute-by-minute tracking of the Real IRA bomb convoy traveling from the Republic up to Omagh and back, said Lord Brennan.

He said two vehicles were used a scout car that went ahead to check the route, and a Vauxhall Cavalier carrying the bomb.

Seamus Daly was in the scout car using Colm Murphy's mobile phone and Seamus McKenna was in the bomb car using another mobile borrowed from another man by Murphy.

Calls between the two mobiles placed both vehicles entering and leaving Omagh, with one call made from the mobile in the scout car to Liam Campbell, "the ops man", less than 30 minutes before the explosion to tell him the car bomb was ready.

Lord Brennan said it "shows Murphy, Mc-Kenna, Daly and Campbell as being involved. Murphy providing the phones, Campbell ops co-ordinator, Daly and McKenna on the bomb run. It all fits together".

He also recounted the three "warning" calls made in the half hour before the bomb exploded, two to Ulster TV and one to the Samaritans.

They mentioned the Omagh Court House and a bomb, but he added: "None of the three warnings referred to a car or any description as to where the bomb might be."

In fact, police and emergency services began clearing people from the area around the Court House down Market Street "into the very vicinity where the car exploded".

The Real IRA claimed responsibility but insisted Omagh had been a "commercial target", but Lord Brennan said: "The claim that the Real IRA didn't intend to kill or injure civilians is hypocritical and a parody."

Other officers also told the court what they saw on August 15, 1998.

PC Geoffrey Eakin spotted the body of a man some way from the bomb with part of his face missing.

Then he saw a young boy, his body "fairly much intact" with his eyes open.

After taking his pulse, the policeman realised he was dead.

"Then I saw a young lady in shock, totally oblivious that her lower leg was on fire. A lot of people were on fire.

"I got a fire extinguisher out and basically went around putting the flames out."

A mortuary was set up in an alley and police officers were each allocated three bodies.

PC Eakin was given numbers 7,8 and 9 - two women and a child.

"The first woman, I was quite taken aback by it because she had been completely decapitated," he said.

"There was no head on the corpse at all - just taken clean off.

"The second woman, the top half of her head had been removed by the force of the explosions.

"In contrast, the body of the small child appeared to be totally intact."

PC Allan Palmer was among those shepherding shoppers towards the car bomb when it detonated in front of them.

He was hit by shrapnel and stumbled forward to see "cars on fire, bodies on fire".

He described seeing one man jump into the crater caused by the bomb and dig with his bare hands to see if there were any survivors.

PC Palmer described the "mayhem" at Tyrone County Hospital as it struggled to cope with the disaster.

"People were running about with parts of bodies. Someone ran in and handed a limb to a constable."

Still after all this phone call activity no one was charged. I remember that day so clearly as the 15th August is my mother's birthday.

A street full of people, many young women and children doing their weekend jobs and many Catholic as the terrorists were, these cunts deserve torture and death.