SAOIRSE32

Irish News
22/01/2009

Claims that intelligence agents tracked the Omagh bombers on the day of the attack but failed to alert police were rejected in an official report yesterday.

Sir Peter Gibson, the intelligence services commissioner, said he had found no evidence to back up allegations that the British government’s listening station GCHQ intercepted information that could have prevented the 1998 atrocity.

Twenty-nine people, including a mother pregnant with twins, were killed when a Real IRA car bomb exploded in the town after misleading warnings.

No-one has ever been convicted of the attack, which inflicted the single biggest loss of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Sir Peter was called in by the government to examine the role of GCHQ after a BBC Panorama programme alleged the agency had monitored calls between the bombers before and after the explosion.

He found that while GCHQ could intercept mobile phone calls it did not have the technology to use them to track the live movements of the bomb car and scout car on the day.

“The portrayal in the Panorama programme of the tracking on a screen of the movement of two cars, a scout car and a car carrying a bomb by reference to two ‘blobs’ moving on a road map has no correspondence whatever with what intercepting agencies were able to do or did on August 15 1998,” he said.

“On the basis of evidence from an independent expert witness from a mobile communications service provider I am satisfied that in 1998 it was neither possible to track mobile phones in real time nor to visualise the location and movement of mobile phones in the way that was shown in the Panorama programme.”

The documentary also claimed that information on the possible identity of the bombers was not passed to RUC detectives in the hours and days after the attack.

Sir Peter said he was satisfied all the data obtained by GCHQ was given to RUC headquarters and its intelligence unit, Special Branch.

However, he did highlight gaps in the information flow between Special Branch and the investigation team working on the case.

This concurs with an investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman in 2001, which found that Special Branch had not passed all its intelligence on the bombers to detectives in Omagh.

Special Branch would have had to gain GCHQ’s permission if it wanted to forward its intelligence on to the RUC in Omagh but Sir Peter revealed that no official request to do that was ever made.

He also noted that Special Branch only briefed the Omagh investigation team twice and gardai once.

“It was not part of the terms of my review that I should investigate, nor have I investigated, the reasons why Special Branch South acted in the cautious way it did, nor have I investigated the soundness of those reasons, although I do not doubt that Special Branch South took the actions it did for what it considered to be good operational reasons.”

Sir Peter also said there was no evidence before him that gardai warned the RUC of a likely attack.

He said there was no intelligence to suggest paramilitaries were planning to strike in Omagh.

British prime minister Gordon Brown, who will meet some of the victims’ relatives at Downing Street next month, is expected to face fresh demands for a full cross-border judicial inquiry.

Some of the families are involved in a multi-million pound High Court compensation claim against the five men they allege were responsible for the bombing.