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14/08/2008 - 16:11:34

Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney will head up a celebration of Tara at the controversial site of the M3 motorway, organisers said today.

He will be joined by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and a host of Irish musicians and poets at the Feis Teamhra, or turn on Tara, Co Meath, next Sunday.

The free event, which takes place on the first day of Heritage Week, is being organised by Save Tara campaigners to allow the Irish Diaspora to honour the historic Hill of Tara.

The critically-acclaimed poet has been vocal in his opposition to the construction of the motorway at the site of the ancient seat of power.

In a recent BBC interview, he said the motorway: “literally desecrates an area - I mean the word means to desacralise and, for centuries, the Tara landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred ground.

“If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved in the name of the dead generations from pre-historic times… it was Tara.”

Other Irish exports who will perform on the day are Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly and Aidan Brennan.

Photo of Tara from here

Another outspoken critic of the motorway is Muldoon who penned a poem Tara of the Kings in 2006 which was later turned into a song by his band Rackett.

“The routing of a busy road slap bang through the Tara-Skryne Valley represents an act of vandalism with not only national, but international, ramifications,” he wrote in the New York Times last year.

He also joined Susan McKeown in a musical, harpers protest outside the Irish consulate in New York last September when harpers in Ireland played outside the Dail.

The event kicks off at 3.30pm on Sunday August 24 at the Mound of the Hostages, past the Tara churchyard.

Environmentalists have called for a halt to construction of the controversial motorway along its present route.

By Vincent Kearney
BBC

It was the worst atrocity of the troubles, but no-one has been convicted of the 29 murders in Omagh 10 years ago.

More people were killed in the Omagh atrocity than any other during the Troubles

The chief constable has said he is frustrated that the killers haven’t been caught, and admits it’s now unlikely they ever will.

The police file on the Omagh bombing remains open, but Sir Hugh Orde is frank about the chances of securing a conviction.

“Unless we get a substantial new lead or perhaps a new witness stepping forward or someone confesses to the crime it is highly unlikely that you’ll see the investigation reaching a successful conclusion in the sense of a criminal prosecution that leads to a conviction,” Sir Hugh said.

“That doesn’t mean there’s any less determination to solve it, it means we need something new to investigate because what we currently have has been investigated to destruction.”

Michael Gallagher, who lost his son Aidan in the explosion, finds it difficult to accept that those responsible haven’t been caught.

“It’s been an unbelievable catalogue of failures,” is how he put it.

“There was a feeling that those responsible were going to be caught very shortly. I never thought I would be sitting talking about it 10 years after the event.

“And as far as justice is concerned, we’re as far back as we were 10 years ago.”

The hopes of the families of those who died were raised by firm statements of intent by the police and British and Irish governments in the immediate aftermath of the bombing.

Standing amid the rubble a shocked and angry Tony Blair had this to say: “People rightly expect that we will take whatever measures we can, properly and legitimately, to bring those responsible to justice.”

Both governments introduced new laws aimed at making it easier to convict those suspected of involvement and Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach at the time, gave this pledge: “We will continue to try to bring the perpetrators to court and to lock them up for a very long time.”

The police devoted huge resources to the investigation in its early stages and vowed that the killlers would be caught.

But the former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan later published a damning critique of that investigation, accusing the police of letting down the victims and their families.

Hugh Orde admits it is unlikely the killers will be brought to justice

Ten years on, no-one has been convicted of the murders. One man, Colm Murphy, was sentenced to 14 years for conspiracy to cause the explosion, but the conviction was later overturned and he’s awaiting a retrial.

The only person charged directly with the 29 murders, south Armagh man Sean Hoey, was cleared of all charges last December.

His trial ended with the judge severely criticising the police, accusing two key prosecution witnesses of lying and labelling much of the evidence presented in court as useless.

Many of the families of those who died say they don’t expect anyone to be convicted of the murders, and find it hard to accept.

Stanley McCombe lost his wife Anne in the blast. He said senior RUC officers visited him days after the explosion and told him they knew who was responsible.

He believes the police on both sides of the border do know the identities of the killers, but suggests there is no political will to put them in jail.

Sir Hugh Orde insists his officers did the best they could with what he calls “second-hand goods” from the initial investigation, and says they will continue to do all they can to catch the bombers.

But he understands the families’ anger.

“I fully understand their frustration, because I think it’s probably the same as my frustration,” he said.

“They had an absolute right to have that crime brought to justice in the traditional sense and put through the courts and to see the people who committed that atrocity locked up and, literally, the key thrown away.”

Some of the Omagh families are taking a civil action, suing five men they claim were responsible for the attack.

But they know it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever see the people who bombed Omagh put behind bars.

News Letter

A memorial to IRA hunger strikers in Newry has been daubed with paint and loyalist graffiti.
The site was discovered vandalised yesterday morning.

Newry Sinn Fein councillor Charlie Casey said the memorial had been there for a number of years.

“It had been erected by local republicans in memory of the hunger strikers and was located on waste ground,” he said.

“But it now has UVF painted over it in two places and the 10 crosses have been painted red, white and blue.”

UUP councillor Danny Kennedy said he did not condone attacks on memorials “even those for hunger strikers which do not have planning permission”.

News Letter
13 August 2008

AN “offensive” remark about the Orange Order has been removed from the Northern Ireland Conservatives’ website.
The Tories have said the comment, highlighted by the DUP, was a personal view and did not reflect the party line.

However, relations between the the Conservative Party and DUP last night appeared to be turning sour in the wake of unremitting DUP attacks on the Tory-UUP merger talks.

The Conservatives issued a statement warning Peter Robinson’s party to stop meddling in a matter which is none of their business and concentrate on running Northern Ireland.

There is already friction between the parties after the DUP backed Gordon Brown on the issue of 42-day detention for terrorist suspects in the House of Commons and saved the Prime Minister from humiliation.

In the uproar in the chamber after that vote Iris Robinson incensed Conservative MPs by goading them with a nine-finger salute, inferring that the nine DUP MPs held sway in the House.

Now the latest in a growing number of DUP attempts to pick holes in the UUP-Tory relationship has gone down badly.

It came on Monday when DUP MLA Edwin Poots highlighted comments on the Northern Ireland Conservatives’ website which said the Orange Order was a “backward-facing, history- obsessed, parish pump society”.

He condemned the Tories and demanded to know if the UUP was now moving to a position of hostility towards the Orange Institution.

Ulster Unionist and Orangeman Tom Elliott said this was patently nonsense.

Yesterday, however, Mr Poots said it was noticeable Mr Elliott had not condemned the “parish pump” remarks on the Tory website by a local senior Conservative.

“Clearly the UUP would rather keep on good terms with their new-found friends than defend the Orange Institution from such scandalous attacks,” he said.

“Mr Elliott and his party would do well to tell us if they agree with comments such as this.”

Mr Poots also produced an email, from the same local Tory who posted the Orange Order remarks on the website, to an unnamed local unionist, in which he further said: “Also, frankly, I’m bored with the ‘holier-than-thou/Orange Order must never be criticised’ stance taken by so many ‘unionists’ out there.”

Mr Poots said this was the Tories making “clear their feelings regarding the Orange Institution and indeed Ulster/Protestant culture. Clearly Orangemen won’t be welcome in a merged UUP-Tory party.”

But a Tory spokesman said the opinions on the website were personal opinions and not official policy.

He called on the DUP to get on with the job of government, not nit-picking at the merger talks.

“Our focus is on the development of normal politics in this part of the UK. We believe that people in Northern Ireland are concerned about the whole range of ‘bread-and-butter issues’ some of which Stormont are failing to address and others which Labour are failing to address at Westminster,” he said

“The Conservative Party has no issue with the Orange Order.

BBC

The two men arrested in an operation targeting dissident republicans on Wednesday have been released without charge, the police have said.

Searches were carried out in the Enniskillen and Irvinestown areas of County Fermanagh and Drumquin in County Tyrone.

Some items were seized for further examination.

The searches were carried out by detectives from the PSNI Crime Operations Department.

The security services’ determination to protect informers cost innocent lives, and has shocked the victims’ relatives

**I am re-posting this article from 2006 because I think it bears re-reading

Liam Clarke
Sunday Times
February 26, 2006

Sam Kinkaid, Northern Ireland’s most senior police detective, read carefully from a typed sheet to the group of bereaved relatives gathered around the boardroom of Omagh library last Wednesday.

“I was sitting directly opposite, looking him in the eye, and I could hardly believe it,” said Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was one of 29 people (including a woman pregnant with twins) murdered in the August 1998 Real IRA bombing. Kinkaid was saying that gardai and MI5 had withheld intelligence from two informers.

One of the sources was Dave Rupert, an American trucker who infiltrated the Real and Continuity IRAs for MI5 and the FBI. The second source was Paddy Dixon, a crooked motor dealer who supplied stolen cars to terrorists and kept the gardai informed.

Kinkaid, an assistant chief constable, retires tomorrow. In his final months of service he has delivered a series of shocks to the political system. It was he who pinned the Northern Bank robbery on the Provisional IRA; he who revealed to the Northern Ireland policing board that IRA decommissioning was incomplete. Sinn Fein branded him an old-style securocrat, but this time it is the security establishment, north and south, that will be embarrassed by his claims.

Yet this is no solo run. Peter Sheridan, Kinkaid’s successor as assistant chief constable, sat beside him in Omagh library last week, nodding in agreement. So did Superintendent Norman Baxter, who heads the Omagh investigation on a day-to-day basis, and Colin Monteith, his No 2. All three agreed that MI5 had known five months in advance of a plot to bomb either Omagh or Londonderry with a Vauxhall Cavalier car, and knew that one of the suspects lived in Omagh.

They passed on details of the plot to gardai, but never told the RUC, as the Northern Ireland police force was then known. Meanwhile, the gardai knew from Dixon that a car had been stolen for an attack on Northern Ireland, but had not intervened for fear of blowing his cover.

The result, as Sheridan told the grieving relatives, was that both Omagh and Derry were on a low state of alert when the bombers struck in August, using a Vauxhall Cavalier. An anonymous telephone warning on August 4 saying a gun and rocket attack on Omagh was planned for August 15 was discounted as a crank call by Special Branch. Even after the attack, the gardai and MI5 withheld the information.

Stanley McComb, whose wife Ann died in the bombing, said: “We are trying to get on with our lives and something like that brings it all back and it makes us frustrated, mad . . .

“We want to meet Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, and Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, and we want straight answers.”

THE evidence behind Kinkaid’s claims comes from two main sources: e-mails sent by Rupert to his MI5 handlers while he worked in Ireland between 1996 and 2001, and notes kept by John White, a garda detective who handled Dixon under the direction of Detective Chief Superintendent Dermot Jennings.

Rupert, from upstate New York, had moved to Chicago, where he was mixing with the hardline Irish Freedom Committee (IFC) when an FBI agent, Ed Buckley, recruited him in about 1995.

Rupert’s business was failing, so his motive for co-operating with the FBI was at first financial. According to Lou Stephens, a financial investigator who formerly headed Irish operations in the FBI, Rupert had been “heavily financed and probably defaulted”.

Rupert headed for Bundoran, Co Donegal, where he befriended Joe O’Neill, a veteran republican who owned a pub in the town. Later Rupert rented a bar of his own, the Drowse Inn, in Leitrim, which he loaned to the Continuity IRA for meetings. It is thought the premises were bugged.

Working under MI5 direction, but without the knowledge of the gardai, Rupert presented himself as a wealthy American who could bring money and guns from across the Atlantic to the dissidents. He insinuated himself into the confidence of Michael McKevitt, the Provisional IRA’s former quartermaster general in charge of weaponry. McKevitt was attempting to set up a new IRA to supplant the Provisionals, who were on ceasefire. The fast-talking Rupert seemed heaven-sent and McKevitt appointed him head of the Real IRA in America.

In 2003 Rupert gave evidence against McKevitt on charges of directing terrorism and some, but not all, of the e-mails he sent to his MI5 handlers were revealed in court in a heavily edited form. One e-mail from Rupert to his handlers claimed Jennings had said gardai “did not care what happened in the north, only what happened in the 26 counties”. Jennings denied this.

On April 11, 1998, Rupert told his handlers that republican dissidents were planning to bomb “Derry or Omagh” and that he had taken part in a scouting operation. MI5 informed the gardai and three suspects were arrested, including a man from Omagh, but later released.

In a later e-mail, MI5 confirmed that the terrorist plot had only been delayed. It wrote to Rupert: “We disrupted the intention to use the car bomb, but maybe not for long . . . Mr (Tony) Blair owes you a beer.”

Amazingly, this information was never passed to the PSNI. Nor was it given to Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Ireland police ombudsman, when she conducted an investigation into the intelligence background to the Omagh bombing. Neither was it made available to Mike Tonge, now chief constable of Gwent, who conducted an independent inquiry on behalf of the Northern Ireland policing board. Senior security sources say that Tonge’s team specifically asked MI5 if it had any relevant intelligence and were told that it had none.

Rupert’s role was not disclosed to the gardai until 2000, when the e-mails were handed over for the purpose of prosecuting McKevitt. Jennings was therefore not in a position to cross-reference them with the intelligence he was receiving from Dixon through White.

Dixon had allowed the gardai to bug a number of vehicles he had stolen for the Real IRA. On March 21, 1998, a bomb was seized in Dundalk and two terrorists arrested with 1,200lb of explosives in one of Dixon’s cars. A few days later, a red BMW 318 stolen by Dixon’s gang and filled with explosives was caught at Dun Laoghaire, where it was being put aboard a ferry en route to London.

On May 19, Dixon received IR£10,000 after two 500lb car bombs were stopped by the gardai near the border and two terrorist suspects arrested.

A British security source said: “The pattern seemed to be that if the gardai could make a seizure in the republic they did so, but they were not so good at passing on information to the British authorities.”

The problem was that each garda success increased the chances that the Real IRA would make the link with Dixon. The PSNI told the Omagh families that, based on White’s testimony, four bombs were let go through by gardai to protect Dixon’s cover. The first was a mortar attack on Moira RUC station in February 1998 in which several police officers and civilians were injured. The second vehicle, a Fiat Punto stolen in Hartstown, was used in an unsuccessful rocket attack in Beleek in May. On May 13, a vehicle containing home-made explosives was, according to White, let through and later found burnt out.

The last one was the Omagh bomb, contained in a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier, precisely the type of vehicle Rupert had warned was likely to be used in Omagh or Derry. This time Dixon did not steal the vehicle. The Real IRA asked him to, but at the last moment said it had found one elsewhere.

White says a senior garda officer told him: “I think we will let this one go through.” The garda’s reasoning was that Dixon was under suspicion and being tested by the Real IRA. The gardai have denied that White met this officer in a bar in Castleknock, but the PSNI suspect he did because White has supplied them with expense forms signed by the senior officer, showing he had been in the bar that day.

According to White, after the bombing the senior officer told him not to write a report on the incident. To avoid suspicion, Dixon was arrested but warned not to make any statement or reveal his role.

In 2002, Dixon was resettled in Britain under a false identity with the help of MI5. On January 10, 2002, three days before Dixon entered a witness protection programme, he had a last meeting with White and, according to a tape-recording of the conversation now in the hands of the PSNI, he predicted: “They (the Real IRA) had got a car and (gardai) . . . knew it was moving within 24 hours at that stage. The Omagh investigation is going to blow up in their faces.”

HUGH ORDE, the PSNI chief constable, will shortly write to Tony Blair, the prime minister, and Noel Conroy, the garda commissioner, outlining the findings of his force’s inquiry. He is likely to say that the PSNI wants to interview Dixon as a matter of urgency.

For the Irish authorities, the matter is closed. A tribunal headed by Dermot Nally has found White’s allegations to be baseless. But its detailed findings were never made public. That tribunal never interviewed Dixon, Baxter or Kinkaid, who wrote three times offering his assistance.

MI5 also considers the matter to be at an end. Last night a Home Office source said: “There is nothing to substantiate the allegation that there was accurate intelligence about any plot against Omagh.” Asked about the resettlement of Dixon he said: “We don’t normally comment on the actions of the security service and we won’t in this case.”

The Omagh families are not prepared to accept that the case is closed.

It was the worst atrocity of the Troubles, and the most stunning because Northern Ireland was thought to be at peace. The notion that it could have been prevented seems certain to haunt the police and security services in Ireland and Britain for years to come.

Times Online
August 13, 2008

**See also: Four months before a car blew up in Omagh, the gardai and MI5 were told it would be there. Why did they do nothing?

Ten years ago on Friday Donna Marie McGillion was shopping in Omagh with her fiancé, Garry, his sister Tracey and Tracey’s daughter Breda, who was to be flower girl at their wedding the following week.

At 3.10pm they were yards from a maroon Vauxhall parked in Market Street when it exploded, killing 29 people and two unborn babies in the deadliest atrocity of the Troubles.

Breda died. Garry and Tracey were severely injured. Donna Marie, then 22, was so badly burnt that she was identified only by her engagement ring, and the last rites were read. She spent months fighting for her life.

Today Mrs McGillion is transformed. She married Garry and has two young children. The mask she wore for three years to protect her plastic surgery is gone, but she is still disfigured. “I have built a good life,” she said, but her cheerfulness hides a deep and lasting pain. At night she hears the screams of the injured and Garry shouting for her amid the mayhem. She receives counselling and finds it hard to talk of the bomb without crying.

She has one piece of shrapnel lodged in her spine, which affects her arms, and another in her knee. She cannot work, lift her children or walk far. She takes painkillers daily, and has to moisturise her scarred body twice every day. After more than 20 skin-graft operations she has refused any more. She avoids mirrors. “I have to look to the future for my family,” she said, but admitted: “I will never forget [the bomb]. It is there when I get up in the morning and go to bed at night.”

Omagh has also been outwardly transformed over the past decade. A regeneration programme has turned a quiet market town into a lively regional hub. The street where the bomb exploded has been prettified and there are smart new boutiques and bars, a new arts centre, college, shopping mall, riverside walk and farmers’ market. The army base, which served as a temporary mortuary, has closed and there is a pioneering plan to move five schools serving Protestant and Roman Catholic students on to its 170 acres.

This outward transformation, however, conceals deep anguish. Most of the bereaved and injured simply will not talk about the bomb. Others wipe away tears as they recall the slaughter of so many innocents: mothers buying school uniforms, six children under 13, four teenagers awaiting exam results, two young women engaged to be married, tourists from Ireland and Spain, a Sunday school teacher, an altar boy.

Some people will not go near the bombsite. Some are still coming forward to be treated for post-traumatic stress. Some have been crushed by their losses or consumed by their pursuit of justice. Despite the solemn promises of Britain’s political leaders and the anti-terrorist legislation that they rushed through Parliament, not one person has been convicted and security sources say that the Real IRA, the Republican splinter group responsible for the bombing, remains an active threat.

Colm Murphy, a builder from Co Louth, had his conviction for conspiracy overturned in 2005. Sean Hoey, an electrician from South Armagh, was acquitted of murder last December.

Nuala O’Loan, the police ombudsman, and the judge in the Hoey trial have roundly condemned the police, whose failure either to avert the bombing or to convict the perpetrators has fuelled any number of conspiracy theories in Omagh, most notably that the security forces connived in the attack to end the Troubles.

It certainly had that effect. Far from destroying the fragile peace process, the massacre cemented it. It inspired such universal disgust that mainstream Republicans could not possibly resume their armed struggle. That is little consolation for those whose lives have been wrecked by the bomb. The Times arrived at the home of Lawrence Rush this week to find him writing a poem to his late wife, Elizabeth, who died in the blast. Mr Rush, 67, was sitting unshaven at a table piled high with papers in a neglected house.

He had been working on the poem for three days. He lives alone, his three grown children having all abandoned Northern Ireland after the bomb. He gave up work long ago. He is lonely, his pain has not diminished and his health has suffered, he said as he chain-smoked. He returned a £7,500 government compensation cheque, calling it an insult. His preoccupation is bringing his wife’s killers to justice and he has vowed not to erect a headstone on his wife’s grave until she can truly rest in peace. Kevin Skelton, 53, whose wife, Philomena, died in the explosion, salvaged his life three years ago when he married the mother of a deprived Romanian girl whom Philomena used to bring to Omagh for holidays. Before that he had left his lorry driving job, given up refereeing football and turned to drink. “It was pure hell,” he said. At his lowest point, “I had a double-barrelled gun under my chin with my fingers on the two triggers”.

Michael Gallagher, whose younger daughter twice tried to kill herself after his son Aidan, 21, died in the blast, runs the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group, which represents several bereaved families. It is utterly incredible that the Real IRA is still operating, he said.

Some of the group’s families are pursuing an unprecedented civil action against five named suspects because they have abandoned hope of criminal convictions. The group is demanding an independent cross-border inquiry into the security services’ performance. In a town with a strong Republican presence it also had to fight to have the words “murdered by a dissident Republican terrorist car bomb” inscribed on the £400,000 memorial that will be unveiled this Friday. For that reason many of the bereaved are boycotting the ceremony.

“Justice is a big part of closure, but sadly justice has eluded us,” Mr Gallagher said. But many of the bereaved want to grieve in private, or to put the bomb behind them now that peace has returned to Northern Ireland, and hate the way his group keeps Omagh in the news. Mick Grimes, 81, a farmer from Beragh, suffered the greatest loss. His wife, Mary, his daughter, Avril, Avril’s 18-month-old daughter, Maura, and her unborn twins all perished that terrible afternoon. He had kept a stoic silence until last week when he published his memoirs, Till We Meet Again, with just one terse chapter on the bomb.

In an interview with The Times Mr Grimes displayed an astonishing lack of bitterness. He said that it was time to forget the past and set hatred aside. “You can do it the other way but you are hurting no one but yourself,” he said. At a packed book launch in Omagh library, however, not even he could hide his pain. As he read a poem from the book he choked on the final lines: “. . . great things will be unfurled / When a gentle mother’s hand / Is allowed to rule the world.”

By David Young
Belfast Telegraph
Monday, 11 August 2008

**See SOMETIMES I JUST GO TO BED AND CRY FOR ORAN

Bernie Doherty can still see her eight-year-old son Oran waving goodbye as he set off for his grand adventure on the morning of the Omagh bomb.

Bernie Doherty, from Buncrana, Co Donegal, with a picture of her son Oran, who died in the Omagh blast aged eight.

She had expected him back home to Buncrana, Co Donegal, later that evening, bursting with stories about his first ever trip away with the local youth group. He never arrived.

The next time she saw him was lying dead in a temporary morgue.

Oran was one of three children from Buncrana who died at Omagh. Twelve-year-olds James Barker and Sean McLoughlin also lost their lives. They had been on a day-trip with a group of Spanish students who had been attending a summer programme in the Donegal town. Two Spaniards, one leader and one student, were also killed in the bomb.

The outing was to the Ulster American Folk Park outside Omagh but the leaders had agreed to let the children finish off the day with a look round the town.

“I wasn’t so happy about him going because he was only eight,” recalls Bernie.

“I watched him until he went out of sight over the hill.

“Four local boys and one of the Spanish students, five of them going down the road and that was it, the last I saw him alive.”

Bernie was in her living room at around 3.30 that afternoon when suddenly two of Oran’s cousins came charging up the garden path.

“I just knew they were there to tell me something about the trip, I just knew,” she says.

As word of the bomb spread the desperate quest for information began. But with phonelines in Omagh deluged it was virtually impossible to find anything out.

After a couple of hours, Oran’s father Mickey decided to drive to Omagh with families of other missing children to search for themselves.

“At midnight my husband called home,” says Bernie.

“He was up at the leisure centre and said every now and again people were called to come up. That there was a list of missing people and gradually it was getting smaller as people were getting found but there was still no word about Oran and Sean.

“Mickey just said, ‘Don’t worry I’ll bring the wee man home, I’ll find him’.”

Bernie stayed at her sister’s house that night. But she didn’t sleep. She just waited. Waited for the phone to ring.

“At 7am I saw people hugging each other at the McLoughlins’ house.

“Someone came up and said, ‘Wee Sean’s dead’. At that exact minute the phone rang. It was Mickey. He said, ‘Have you heard the news?’ I said, ‘Yes, wee Sean’s dead’, and he said, ‘Yes and Oran’s dead too’.

“I just fired the phone to the ground.”

Since the bomb, the people of Buncrana gather every August 15 to hold a mass for those who died at Omagh. Bernie lays flowers at Oran’s grave once a week.

News Letter
14 August 2008

TWO men continue to be questioned by detectives investigating dissident republican activity in the west of the Province.

Police have disclosed that planned searches took place by the crime operations division in Fermanagh and Tyrone on Wednesday.

A number of items were seized for examination during the raids in Enniskillen, Irvinestown and Drumquin.

A police spokesperson confirmed the operation was focussing on dissident republicans.

Earlier this week, the PSNI revealed renegade republicans in their estimation would have approximately 80-100 active members.

Dissidents have been blamed for numerous murder attempts on police officers this year.

By William Allen
Belfast Telegraph
14 August 2008

A mother whose nine-year-old daughter was the youngest victim of an atrocity 36 years ago will tomorrow be laid to rest in the same grave.

Friends said that Merle Eakin, whose nine-year-old daughter Kathryn was killed as she cleaned the windows of the family grocery store in Claudy in 1972, never got over the youngster’s death.

Kathryn was one of nine people murdered when two bombs exploded in the Co Londonderry village. The other people killed were, Joseph McCluskey, David Miller, James McClelland, William Temple, Elizabeth McElhinney, Rose McLaughlin, Patrick Connolly and Arthur Hone.

A PSNI probe has claimed there was a cover-up by the Government and the Catholic Church to prevent the unmasking of a priest who was allegedly involved in the bombing.

Mary Hamilton, a UUP member of Derry City Council, who was injured in the attack, said last night that she was sad to learn that Mrs Eakin, who lived in Castlerock, died on Tuesday after a stroke.

She added that she and her husband Ernie, who owned a hotel blasted by the bomb, had kept in touch with the Eakin family since the atrocity.

She said: “Our sympathy goes to her husband Billy, and to their son Mark. Merle never got over what happened.”

She said Mrs Eakin would be buried in the same grave as her daughter, adding: “Now, after 36 years, she is back with Kathryn.”

Mrs Eakin will be buried in Claudy after a service in Castlerock tomorrow.

The funeral will leave her home at Castle Park at 11.30am, followed by a service in Christ Church, Castlerock, and burial at Upper Cumber Cemetery.

Mrs Eakin had spoken in the past about how she tried to come to terms with what happened.

She said: “It is very emotional because it is the same Christmas present every year, a bunch of flowers. You don’t have to think about what you are going to buy her. It’s not fair really. She was such a lovely child.”

The murder triggered widespread revulsion across Ulster and a backlash against the IRA, who never admitted the attack.

Mrs Eakin had called for a full public inquiry, along the lines of the Saville Inquiry, to be held to investigate the alleged role of Fr James Chesney and a possible cover-up by the British government and the Catholic Church.

The Police Ombudsman has prepared a report on the bombing. It was due to be released several months ago, but was delayed while a new development was probed.

‘I bargained with God and prayed so Aiden would live’

Belfast Telegraph
14 August 2008

Cathy Gallagher, whose brother Aiden died in the Real IRA attack, has rarely spoken publicly about her loss. But on the eve of the 10th anniversary, the 30-year-old gives her own account of the heartache and anger that has dominated her life since the bombing

Cathy and Michael Gallagher, the sister and father of Omagh bomb victim, Aiden Gallagher.

God handed me a pair of glasses that changed my view of the world forever. Until that day, I guess I lived with a false sense of security. How I wish I still did. At 20 years old, my carefree life was about to come to an abrupt end. Little was I to know, not only was I about to lose a brother, but in turn I would lose my whole family in some form or another.

On that morning, I spoke with Aiden. He was in his bed sleeping off the night before, with jeans and shirt still on, I knew it must have been a good night.

I stood at the foot of his bed brushing my teeth noisily, trying to wake him. He grunted and settled down for his second sleep, so with my cue to leave I headed into town. I never imagined that this would be the last time I’d ever see Aiden. I relive that moment in my head. Trying to preserve every last piece. It’s all I have left now.

I was in our family kitchen when the bomb exploded. The glass in the windows shook and I felt for sure that every window in the house had broken.

Mum rushed into the room in a panic. She told me it was a bomb. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom and watched as a black puff of smoke encircled the town.

I switched on the TV for a newsflash. It wasn’t long before reports started coming through, followed by the death toll. I turned it off and placed a white candle on the window. Dad was waiting at the leisure centre for news.

Family started arriving, my stomach was churning over and over. I felt so helpless, all I could do was pray, and that I did. I locked myself in the bathroom and kneeling at the edge of the bath, I prayed so fast and furious that I was getting muddled. I couldn’t stop or Aiden would die, I told myself. So I prayed harder and harder until I was exhausted. I bargained with God and made promises to Aiden, silly things like I would clean his room, iron his shirts and make him snacks. Sadly this wasn’t to be.

As the night turned into morning, the house resembled a wake with almost every seat taken. I felt claustrophobic, like I wanted to scream or hide. I had all sorts of emotions running through my veins.

As the clock ticked on, I heard the front door open. I sat at the kitchen breakfast table looking into the hallway. My legs where buckling from under me with sheer fear of what I might be told. I’d gladly wait another 14 hours to hear the news I did.

My mother was in the hall with her eyes fixated in the direction of the front door. Daddy walked down to meet her and without a word opened his arms and cradled her tightly. His face was pale and tear-stained. Gripping each other, they wept like children.

It’s a hard thing to watch your parents in a state of agony like that. They stood for what felt like hours.

I felt overcome by anger, I had waited so long for so little, I was angry with God, with Aiden, with everything. So many things were racing through my head. I wanted to know where Aiden was now, who was with him when he died, did he just lay there on the street on his own with no family to look after him, did he suffer, was he killed instantly?

He was so strong at 6ft 3ins, why couldn’t he handle the blast? My head was wrecked with so many questions. As I looked at the cups piled on the worktop I felt a surge of rage to swipe them on to the floor. The next few days would come and go as a blur, like a zombie. I couldn’t sleep, eat or even change my clothes.

I wanted time to stand still. How could I face the future knowing Aiden couldn’t? It just seemed unfair.

I felt guilty when I ate the foods he loved, I couldn’t watch the TV shows we enjoyed together and I was afraid to smile in case people thought I had forgotten about him. I was living in turmoil.

As my father began his campaign, with Omagh Support and Self-Help Group, we as a family were fully supportive. We certainly couldn’t have predicted the lead role he would take. Never a public speaker, this would take quite a bit of getting used too. More often than most, Dad could be found in raggy oily clothes with a blackened face and hands. To see him wear a suit was something of a novelty.

Over the following months after the bomb the group formed, we met the other bereaved families. We developed a close bond that only comes from common suffering. We could get emotional, talk endlessly about our loved ones and generally relax in each others’ company. Soon meetings were held in front living rooms and congregated around kitchen tables. With tea cups stacked high we conducted our business into the small hours. I did my share, often staying up typing letters and writing speeches under pressure with tight deadlines. I felt good, like I was doing something productive.

Campaigning will not bring Aiden back, but it just may well save the life of your brother, son, mother, sister or father from being the next victim. Perhaps Aiden would still be alive today if we stopped accepting our losses so graciously. We are a group of honest, heartbroken people who don’t want anyone else to go through a similar experience.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom, there are some decent, genuine people who have humbled us with messages of support, and for that we continue.

Ten years on, and emotions still run high. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Aiden or speak his name. I am married now and have a husband and son who will never know their brother-in-law or uncle.

I’ll always yearn for the days when everything felt normal but I have accepted that it will never be. Aiden has been stolen from my life and I will never let the thieves forget it.

–As told to David Young

Belfast Telegraph
14 August 2008

While the Omagh outrage wreaked devastation its legacy has also helped others traumatised by horrific events around the globe. Kerry McKittrick hears about a unique form of cognitive therapy which was developed after the bomb

David Bolton is one of the founder members of the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Transformation in Omagh where a special cognitive therapy, which is based on counselling, is used. He says:

The Omagh bomb was a different situation from something like the Enniskillen tragedy. When the Poppy Day bomb happened, there was very much a sense of ongoing war. With Omagh, there were ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement had been signed four months before. The Enniskillen bomb had revealed the obvious physical impact of a bomb, but we weren’t sure what the psychological impact would be.

I got involved in Omagh an hour after the bomb went off. I led the team that was based in the local leisure centre that evening. It was being used as an information centre for relatives to go to. It was immediately clear that this was an appalling tragedy and that conventional services wouldn’t be able to cope and additional ones would have to be laid on.

The Monday after the bomb, myself and my colleagues met with the then Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, to discuss what would be needed in terms of mental health. She asked us to present her with a plan within three weeks.

What happened was that the temporary group, the Omagh Community Trauma and Recovery Team, came into force on the Tuesday, three days after the bomb. At that point this was a multi-agency response, not just us but services like GPs as well. That group existed for three and a half years, and during that time we saw over 700 people. A large proportion of people came in with problems such as stress and mental health issues. Others came with practical problems such as unemployment. We were a group for mental health, but we didn’t turn anyone away. We were an obvious first point of contact for people who needed help after the bomb.

In the early days we did studies into the impact of the bomb on the local people and their families. These studies were singularly important in how we approached people. They brought together the wisdom and experience of the local community, and the excellent work of the local services.

We were very lucky for with this information, and with the help of the cognitive therapy from Oxford University, we were able to develop a cognitive therapy technique tailored to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder people were suffering after the bomb.

The one event that sticks in my mind was when a schoolgirl brought her friend in by the hand and asked us if there was anything we could do for her. That particular moment made us all very emotional as it showed us how family and friends were reacting and supporting others through the tragedy.

The permanent centre, the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Transformation, was driven by two main concerns.

The first was that the treatment developed would not be lost and the second was that there would something that came out of the tragedy that would make a contribution to all of the communities in need, not just Omagh. This is how our humanitarian work started.

We’ve developed our humanitarian work to bring the treatment to other places that needed it. I remember sitting in the office of the New York Fire Department after 9/11. We were looking out of the window at where the Twin Towers used to be, having a very moving conversation with members of the Fire Department and their clinicians.

It was this conversation that led us to invite representatives from the Fire Department, Police Department and Port Authority over here to see what we had done.

We went to Sarajevo because of the appalling experience the city had during its siege. The mental health staff there had been trying to provide a service to the community that had been caught up in it. The workers themselves had been affected — some had lost relatives, some had been caught up in the violence.

In Sri Lanka after the tsunami we met a group of Buddists who had been badly affected. They were coping with an enormous scale of loss and were doing the best with their own resources and wisdom. We learned how to help them, and in turn we learned from them. Some of the work we do now has been greatly influence by our experiences in Sri Lanka and Sarajevo.

The future of the centre is dependent on funding, the capacity to develop innovative programmes depends on money and support from the backers, and we need a robust commitment if we are to recruit staff. We would very much like to extend our specialist programmes, there aren’t enough of those.

I, myself, would like to stay with the centre for as long as there is a need for me. At the very least, I want to see trauma treatment develop a firmer footing in Northern Ireland.”

‘People were very distressed, their lives were put on hold’

Dr Kate Gillespie is a psychiatrist, originally from Donegal. She was involved with the original recovery team and is the centre’s clinical director. She says:

After the bomb, the Omagh Community and Recovery Team was established outside of the mental health trust in Omagh. Professor David Clarke and his team had been pioneering a cognitive therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There were other kinds of therapies and responses for dealing with what had happened, but we pursued this particular kind. We were able to link with Oxford and the trained people there, which gave us a level of ongoing supervision, and as time went on the indications were that it was working well.

Most of the cases were of PTSD — people were very distressed and their lives were put on hold. People were also suffering from depression and panic attacks. For us at the time the model was very effective and, as it was researched, it gave us as therapists an idea that what we were doing was safe and that it would provide a good outcome.

Nothing should be taken away from the other services, like psychiatric practices in west Belfast which have been working under the radar for years. We were very lucky that at the time this new model of cognitive therapy was emerging.

There isn’t a particular moment that was special to me during this time. I could see the difference it was making with every day.

People came in in horrendous states, but you could see them improve with each session. There were some with whom you didn’t achieve the results, but they didn’t get any worse.

The improvement is something that creeps up on you until one day you see this shift during the therapy. There was a gradual realisation that this was a very effective way of dealing with trauma. I had no qualms at all about being clinical director of the trauma centre. I saw what the treatment was doing and wanted to offer it to more people, especially to those with multiple conditions.

As time has gone on we’ve focused a lot more on training people, and have developed certificates and a master’s degree with the University of Ulster. I’d like to think that our work will be done at some point.”