Report: Irish Police Let Omagh Bomb Through
October 19, 2003
By REUTERS
Filed at 9:30 a.m. ET
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Relatives of victims of Northern
Ireland's 1998 Omagh bombing made fresh demands Sunday for
an inquiry into the attack after senior Irish police were
accused of ignoring a warning about the bomb to protect an
informer.
Twenty-nine people were killed in the attack by the Real
IRA, a republican splinter group opposed to the
British-ruled province's peace process.
The Observer newspaper said it had obtained a transcript of
a taped conversation between an informer in the guerrilla
group -- named as Paddy Dixon -- and his police handler, in
which Dixon alleges the bomb was allowed to ``go through''
to preserve his cover.
Dixon provided intelligence on nine different Real IRA bomb
plots, the British paper said. Five were thwarted thanks to
his information but four were allowed to go ahead to
maintain his ``credibility'' in the organization.
In the transcript Dixon, a master car thief, said he had
given police in the Irish republic intelligence about a
stolen car to be used in a bombing across the border in
Northern Ireland just 24 hours before the Omagh attack.
``They (the Real IRA) had got a car and they (the Irish
police) knew it was moving, they knew it was moving within
24 hours at that stage,'' Dixon says on the tape, recorded
in January 2002, days before he was forced to flee Ireland.
Dixon warns the Irish authorities that ``Omagh is going to
blow up in their faces,'' according to the transcript.
Asked about the newspaper report, a spokesman for the Irish
police told Reuters Sunday there was ``no comment to make
at this point.''
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed in the Omagh
blast in August 1998, said the Irish government had to
investigate claims that police had prior knowledge of the
attack.
``I just can't see how they can resist (an inquiry) -- by
any standards this is very damning material,'' he told
Reuters, adding: ``Omagh is a pressure-cooker and you can't
sit on the lid forever.''
Families of the victims have long called for an
investigation into how police on both sides of the Irish
border dealt with the Omagh bombing, the worst single
attack in three decades of the Northern Irish conflict.
Only one person has been convicted in connection with the
bombing, for conspiracy. No one has been charged with
murder.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/inter...f562d990140693
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