Posted on 12/09/2001 6:25:12 AM PST by aculeus
REPUBLICANS planted a bomb in Omagh in the summer of 1998, but the real responsibility for the deaths of 29 people lies with the policemen and women who failed to prevent it.
Such is the twisted logic of the realm of the peace process, a logic that seeks to turn the world on its head and which tells us that a man named as a member of the IRA's Army Council is a credible critic of police action.
The leaking of Nuala O'Loan's report into the RUC's handling of the Omagh bombing, both before and after the atrocity, was vicious, and undoubtedly malicious. The glee with which it was seized upon by those seeking to make political capital from murder was revolting, and those who leapt on the bandwagon cared not a jot for the families of those who died, or for the police, emergency services and hundreds of ordinary people who worked frantically to save lives on that awful day.
Ms O'Loan, the police ombudswoman in Northern Ireland, is a courageous woman in a difficult job. Her decision to investigate the Omagh bombing cannot be faulted: it is a stain against our societies, North and South, that only one person has been charged with a connection to the bombing after years of investigation by the police forces on both sides of the border. And once allegations had been made that the RUC had received warnings of terrorist activity in Omagh on the day of the bombing, Ms O'Loan had a duty to find out what had happened. This week, barring injunctions or a change of a heart, Ms O'Loan will publish her 150-page report into the affair and we will be better able to judge the quality of her evidence compiled by competent investigators and make our conclusions. For the moment, as John Reid, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, pointed out last week, it is invidious to judge people on the basis of selective leaks. What we can do, however, is judge how people reacted to those leaks.
The case for the vilification of the RUC, and in particular the Special Branch of the RUC, is simple enough. They received two warnings in the days before the attack. One was a warning of a terrorist attack on the day in Omagh. The warning was specific: a gun and rocket grenade assault on police by named individuals. The second warning was vaguer: a named individual had been encountered reeking of bomb-making. No specifics this time about the place, or timing, of any attack, but a clear warning that a bomb was being manufactured for use somewhere in Northern Ireland.
The first warning, according to the police, was checked out and found to be false: the named individuals were criminals, not terrorists and the Special Branch put it to one side. No such attack happened. The second warning was credible, but non-specific.
The case for the vilification would have you believe that if the RUC had efficiently collated both warnings, then an intelligent policeman would have added one and one and deduced that a lethal bombing was planned for Omagh.
But the case for the vilification goes deeper: incompetence alone is not the sub-text here. Listen to those who have seized upon the leaked report and you will hear the implicit allegations of evil-doing being laid against the Special Branch, that somehow they were prepared to allow Omagh be bombed for devious reasons of their own.
The ombudswoman's report may contain far more damaging evidence of RUC incompetence in the days and weeks before the Omagh bombing, but if it does not, then the case for prevention based on the two warnings already cited does not hold water. They certainly do not justify the dramatic treatment given to the leaked report by Friday's edition of the Guardian newspaper. On the day that Kandahar fell, the Guardian devoted two-thirds of its front page to the story, and almost half of that page to the headline: 'Yesterday the truth emerged: there were warnings and the police ignored them'. The Guardian, of course, like so many on the left, despises police the world over and revels in the opportunity to wound.
The effect that that headline alone must have had on the families of the victims can only be imagined. For them, scarcely healed wounds are being callously ripped open. How awful can it be to think that such tragedy, such terrible loss, could have been prevented?
But why, given the flimsiness of the case for the prevention of the bombing, has it been dressed up into such an apparently damning indictment of the RUC? As always, the answers lie in the political agendas that swarm around Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin wants rid of the Special Branch, the scourge of its own terrorist arm for many years. The opportunity to vilify Special Branch over an issue as emotive as Omagh is a godsend, and Sinn Féin's Pat Doherty dutifully seized upon it. Doherty, who has been named in the House of Commons as a member of the IRA's Army Council, led the charge on the BBC and RTE, but never once explained why he and his people have not raised a finger to bring the Omagh bombers to justice.
Republicans, North and South, know (as well as the police do) the men and women who were responsible for that August carnage. Mr Doherty knows that if Sinn Féin and its army had asked its supporters to help put away the murderers, then the chances of a successful prosecution would have risen exponentially. Instead they do nothing, but still have the gall to make politics out of those murders.
Republicans killed 29 people men, women, children and babies, as well as twin girls who were due to be born within weeks in Omagh. They gave warnings that day that made the carnage even greater than it would otherwise have been. The killers have been protected by the silence of other Republicans.
Blame for the attack, blame for the deaths, blame for the failure to achieve a prosecution, and blame for the failure to prevent the attack, must rest squarely on the shoulders of the Republican movement. That should never be forgotten. The RUC, and the gardai, do have questions to answer. Put aside the suggestion that the bombing could have been prevented and you are left with serious allegations of shoddy police work after the bombing. All police forces despise scrutiny, but they must all be subject to it. Attacking Ms O'Loan and her office is wrongheaded and self-defeating: she has a job to do, and the end result of that job should be enhanced respect for policing in Northern Ireland.
Ronnie Flanagan, the retiring chief constable, owes the victims' families a detailed explanation of what went wrong, and why, in that investigation. Bringing in outside officers may help to restore some confidence, but after the damage caused in the past few days, and the further fall-out that will come this week when the full report is published, Flanagan has a duty to the families and a duty to those officers he leaves behind in the new police force to lay bare the truth. That, above all else, is what the families want: the simple truth of what happened, and the prosecution of those responsible a prosecution that they themselves are determined to bring if the justice system fails to do it for them.
He also has a duty to ensure the survival of Special Branch. Anyone who honestly believes that terrorists and paramilitary criminal gangs from both sides of the sectarian divide will not continue to pose a major threat in the years ahead is living in a dream-world. The war against them must be fought, and fought aggressively and that requires a special branch: unless you take your views on policing from Sinn Féin.
Omagh was a terrible, terrible day in Eire, and the point of me posting this article was not to drum up support for those who committed this terrible atrocity. Rather, it was to point out the hypocrisy, the underhandedness, the evil policy of the British government to ignore these warnings, to maximize damaged caused by these rouge terrorist groups to make them even worse, in the hopes of turning people more towards the government and away from "the cause".
Obviously this is a terrible act, but is there some of the blood from the 29 dead on the hands of the Brits?
1 posted on 12/6/01 2:41 PM Eastern by Benson_Carter
The Garda and RUC stopped over 30 'Real IRA' attacks up to August 1998 but were unable to stop the worst single atrocity in the history of the Troubles, writes Jim Cusack [Irish Times, December 7]
Both the RUC (now Police Service of Northern Ireland) and Garda Special Branches had informants working inside or on the periphery of the republican terrorist group responsible for the Omagh atrocity.
Up to the early summer of 1998 the Garda had a run of successes against the group, intercepting car bombs and explosives on their way to attacks in Northern Ireland and Britain.
Interesting that you should think that London and Dublin had so little faith in the Agreement that they would let people die to improve its chances of success.
Mr John Fee, the SDLP Assembly member for the area, condemned the violence and challenged Sinn Féin to say whether it was a new republican tactic in the fight to rid the border of security posts.
He said he had been asking the question since the first protest a month ago and had not been answered. He demanded to know if Sinn Féin's leadership was "hiding behind" its youth wing and if not, "are they out of control?"
Thirty years of violence in South Armagh had not got rid of military installations, he said. When everyone else was now able to organise peaceful protest there was "well orchestrated physical conflict" along the border.
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