20th Dec 2007
The tragedy of Omagh
I remember the day of the Omagh bomb like it was yesterday. I was the SDLP’s Director of Communications and Seamus Mallon was Shadow Deputy First Minister for just over a month. It had been a long summer. Drumcree was bad and the 12th of July in Belfast had been tense.
We took a last minute opportunity to go on a bargain basement fortnight to Tenerife to escape Northern Politics. It was one of those get yourself to Manchester for a middle of the night flights out. Fine when you are leaving but pretty awful on the way home. We got back to Belfast at about 9.00am on Saturday 15th August 1998. I was still asleep when my wife answered the phone just after 3.00pm. It was a BBC journalist in London asking had I got someone to react to a bomb in Omagh. He was panicked and wanted to speak with me immediately. When he told her there were seven dead she shouted into the bedroom. A minute later it was a local journalist saying reports were of ten dead but nothing was confirmed because the lines were down in Omagh. I was practiced in this type of media relations. A couple of years as SDLP press officer had served up more than enough shootings and other incidents, but this was on an altogether different scale. This was back to the dark days. Days I had hoped I would never see. Hard to believe we were organising concerts for a YES vote in the Referendum for the Good Friday Agreement with U2 just three months earlier.
I phoned John Hume, Seamus Mallon and the local MLA at the time - Joe Byrne. Mallon, now in an office of state, had already received a call from officials and was getting ready to travel. He would be in Omagh by 5.00pm.
Seamus is one of the most literate men I know. He is a master of the English language and that afternoon, the sun beating down as he drove from Markethill, Co Armagh, he would have been preparing himself, choosing his words carefully, conscious that whatever he said would be broadcast far and wide as the words of the hopeful future for Northern Ireland delivered against the backdrop of a scene so reminiscent of its tragic past.
When Seamus emerged from the bomb site and stood to face the assembled media his first words were about a pram. He told the press he had seen a mangled pram in the wreckage of the road. He wondered about the little child being carried in it and the mother who was pushing it. To this day I don’t know the answer to his rhetorical question. Among the children that died that day were two little girls, Maura Monaghan (18 months) alongside her mum, Averil and her Mother, Mary and Brenda Devine (20 months). I must assume the pram belonged to one of them.
I have met the Omagh relatives on a number of occasions. They are a brave group. Despite the events of 1998 most remain deeply committed to the peace process and a new beginning for this island. Today they must feel betrayed and rejected by the hope of Good Friday 1998. They must also feel angry that a new beginning to policing has not brought justice to Omagh.
Sean Hoey is a free man. 59 charges were stuck out in a Belfast court this afternoon. The RUC case fell apart like a house of cards. Low copy DNA has been discredited and nine years after the largest single atrocity on this island we are further from justice than ever.
I am not going to turn this post into an analysis of the PR implications for the PSNI, serious and all that they are, albeit problems principally inherited from the old RUC.
I just wanted to say how very sad I am that the State has failed the people of Omagh. And how angry I am that a solid case was not presented in court and that such monumental errors were identified by Mr Hoey’s lawyers. Nobody can bring back the dead but surely we owe it to all our children to ensure that someday, someone is held accountable for what happened on that day.
[...] We saw live television coverage of the OJ Simpson trial in 1995 and even with lorry loads of evidence the Prosecutors could not secure a conviction. Simpson had his day in court (all 133 of them) within about six months of the crimes he was accused of. Three years later on the 15th of August 1998 the car bombing of Omagh took place with the loss to our land of 29 souls. It was not until three years later that the Northern Ireland authorities brought their first suspect to trial for this obscenity, his guilty verdict was subsequently overturned because the RUC (at the time) had fabricated evidence! Ten years after the bombing a second defendant was brought before the judicial system on such flimsy evidence that the judge had to publically admonish the prosecuting team for their incompetence. There are no other suspects awaiting trial in this case, and much to the heartache of the victim’s families and friends, it will be a hard road if they have to begin the investigation all over again. Read O’Conall Street’s post. [...]
[...] evaded interview since the collapse of Sean Hoey’s trial in December, Channel 4 and Victor Barker’s persistence paid off [...]