A senior detective has told the Omagh bombing inquiry that the man who transported the 1998 bomb which killed 29 people may have been an agent for both UK security services and Ireland’s police force.
The inquiry evidence
Retired Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter gave evidence to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry on Friday, telling the hearing that as he went through the investigation it became very apparent that an individual was a Garda agent, and that in one operation there was a high potential that he was jointly handled by the security services.
Baxter said he also believed that intelligence services were aware of the bombers’ activity before they carried out the Omagh bombing. “The amount of information they knew I can’t assess but yes, they knew,” he told the hearing.
Why it matters
Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, died in the Real IRA bombing in the County Tyrone town on 15 August 1998 – the biggest single atrocity in the Troubles. Baxter said there was “significant effort by the Garda to prevent their activities being uncovered”.
Baxter told the inquiry that the gardaí allowed bombs to be taken across the border into Northern Ireland and that “the government of Ireland had information that a bombing was imminent”. He said the Omagh bombers had “free rein” from the middle of 1997 and the authorities allowed that to continue.
“There were a number of opportunities in the past when this group could have been disrupted,” he said. “They could have saved the lives in Omagh.”
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The bomb route
Baxter also told the inquiry about a test run of the bomb route that was taken by two “known dissidents” the day before the bombing. Senior counsel to the inquiry, Paul Greaney KC, reading from Baxter’s report, outlined how the detective noted a vehicle bearing the registration number of Seamus McKenna’s car was recorded entering the Thiepval military base in Lisburn in September 1997.
It then re-emerged on the system on 12 August 1998 and was recorded crossing the border at Aughnacloy on 14 August, the day before the bombing. Another vehicle also travelled the route, it was linked to Liam Campbell, he continued.
When asked about the report, Baxter added: “It might have been a test run in terms of timing how long it took from the origins of the bomb to the target site.”
What happens next
Known members of the Provisional IRA were seen with the car the bomb was in at a GAA club in County Armagh the night before the bombing. The Provisional IRA were on a ceasefire when the attack happened.
Baxter said he cannot rule out that there was a second informer involved in the bombing. He said the investigation was resourced well.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed in the 1998 Real IRA attack, helped to found the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group, said Baxter’s evidence was “difficult to listen to, but hugely important to hear”.
“I always believed the MI5’s job was to provide internal security in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to hear that the intelligence was not being shared, that was a huge shock,” he added.
It was not an easy thing to say publicly things that are not going to be liked by your former bosses, he said.
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