Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2010-03-16

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9780215544414

On Saturday 15 August 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, County Tyrone, killing 29 people and two unborn children. No one has been successfully convicted of this mass murder. This report considers events on and after the day of the bombing, questioning whether certain actions could have resulted in the prosecution and conviction of those responsible for the crime. The Committee stresses however that the Real IRA and the individuals who carried out the bombing are responsible for those deaths alone. The inquiry which informs this report began in Omagh in October 2008 when the Committee met representatives of the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group and paid their respects at the memorial garden erected in the town. At this time two significant processes were under way which inform the bulk of this Report. Sir Peter Gibson's (the Intelligence Services Commissioner), review and also a civil court action by some of the Omagh families against five named individuals and the Real IRA had begun some eight years ago and remains in progress. As Appeal proceedings have begun the Committee makes no comment on that case in this report. In this document the Committee, report facts that are already matters of public record and make some general points about the treatment of victims of terrorist incidents. The Committee looked at the Gibson Review (which resulted from a BBC Panorama programme broadcast two days earlier and an article in that week's Sunday Telegraph by the BBC reporter John Ware), High Court Action and the case for a public inquiry.