The Omagh bomb

Posted by Jim on August 18, 2018

Jude Collins (judecollins.com)

As children, we all loved a simple tale: Goldilocks v the wolf,
Cinderella v the ugly sisters (not very pc, that one), the three little
pigs v another wolf. In life, things are rarely that neat.

Take the Omagh bomb. This morning on the BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster
news, the anniversary topped the news headlines. There were tape
recordings of breathless news reports at the time, interviews with the
loved ones of those killed. The words of Kevin Skelton (married, as it
happens, to a remote cousin of mine) still can move even after twenty
years. We heard the heartfelt words of a police officer who although
off-duty went to the scene to help as best he could.

The victims of Omagh – my home town – are often spoken of as being
murdered. There were events that occurred during the Troubles that were
indeed murder – that is, the killers set out to and succeeded in killing
innocent people. If we consider the pattern of events for some months
before Omagh, the signs are that it wasn’t murder: the Real IRA didn’t
set out to deliberately slaughter the good and defenceless people they
did.

Earlier in August 1998, the Real IRA bombed Banbridge, where they caused
extensive damage and injured quite a few people, but killed no one. How
could that be? Because they phoned a warning in advance. Their target
was commercial, not human.

In Omagh a few weeks later, they also phoned an advance warning. But
because, we are told, they misnamed the streets, police shepherded
people into the epicentre of the blast, not away from it. So the Real
IRA appear to have made the basic mistake of not knowing the street
names of the town they were bombing.

But were the Omagh victims not murdered? Ultimately it’s an academic
exercise – all those people are in their graves, owing to that bomb. But
if you were setting out to murder someone, would you ring up and give
advance notice? The Real IRA had in mind to do to Omagh what they did to
Banbridge, but they cocked it up. Or someone did.

Because there are stories, not all of them fanciful, that the
authorities knew in advance about the Omagh bomb but did nothing. It is
certainly true that there were two undercover agents in the Real IRA at
the time – David Rupert, an American FBI informer and Paddy Dixon, who
procured cars for the Real IRA to transport bombs. Both these men almost
certainly knew what was planned and their handlers very likely knew
also, but because, presumably, they didn’t want these people’s cover to
be blown, nothing was done. The Omagh families of those killed speak of
a “starving of intelligence” prior to the bomb being triggered. And so
the bomb was brought to Omagh and exploded.

None of this was mentioned in the news coverage on BBC this morning.
Instead, they repeated news reports and the agonised testimony of a
traumatised Kevin Skelton, and pleas for those who carried out the
bombing to come forward and admit their crime. Nothing of the fact that
the Real IRA almost certainly did not intend to slaughter over thirty
people: even in terms of self-interest, such an event was sure to turn
all sympathy away from them, and it did. Behind all this there were the
shadowy figures of Rupert and Dixon, who almost certainly knew that a
bomb was on its way – as did, in all likelihood, their handlers – but
nothing was done to stop it.

The bereaved of Omagh have never been short of sympathy. But they have
been starved of truth. And although it’s an academic point, their loved
ones were slaughtered but not murdered.