Free Republic

A 25-year-old police officer has been killed after a bomb exploded under his car in Omagh, County Tyrone.The device exploded under the vehicle outside his home in Highfield Close, off the Gortin Road, just before 1600 BST on Saturday. He is the second policeman to be killed since PSNI was formed out of the RUC. Since 2007, dissident republicans have planted dozens of booby-trap bombs under the private cars of police officers. The bombs have failed to detonate, but two policemen lost their legs in attacks in May 2008 and January 2010.

Murphy acquitted over Omagh bombing COLM MURPHY walked free from the Special Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday after he was cleared at a retrial of a conspiracy charge in relation to the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people and injured more than 300. Mr Murphy said after being acquitted of the charge: “I am glad to see it’s all over. Find out who was behind it – MI5 agents setting people up.” The three-judge non-jury court ruled that there was no evidence upon which the court could have convicted Mr Murphy after it ruled that all the evidence of...

Excerpt - A republican has been cleared of murdering 29 people in the Omagh bombing after a judge's damning attack on the police probe into Northern Ireland's worst terrorist atrocity. Sean Hoey, 38, from South Armagh waved as relatives applauded his acquittal at Belfast Crown Court. Victor Barker, whose son James died in the blast, told Sky News: "It is my view, and the view of my family, that Sean Hoey is one of the conspirators of the Omagh bomb... we cannot prove it." ~ snip ~

BELFAST (Reuters) - British police had information that renegade republicans were planning to attack the Northern Irish town of Omagh 11 days before a bomb in 1998 killed 29 people in the province's worst guerrilla atrocity, the BBC has reported. An investigation by the Police Ombudsman found that days before the August 15 bombing, police had been warned by an informant that an attack by republican dissidents was imminent, while another warning had mentioned Omagh and the planned date, the BBC said. A police detective was said to have spoken to an anonymous caller on August 4 for more than ...

Man charged over Omagh bombing A 34-year-old man has been charged with supplying the car used to plant the Real IRA bomb which killed 29 people in Omagh, County Tyrone in 1998. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said the man, from Dundalk in the Irish Republic, would appear before a magistrate in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh on Wednesday morning. The man was detained by police in the border town of Newry, County Down - a few miles north of Dundalk - on Monday. The PSNI said that the 34-year-old had been charged by detectives from the Omagh bomb investigation team...

DUBLIN, Ireland - The only man convicted in connection with Northern Ireland's deadliest bombing walked free from prison Friday after winning an appeal and posting bail, an outcome that disgusted survivors of the 1998 blast. Three years ago, Colm Murphy, 52, received a 14-year sentence for allegedly supplying two cell phones to Irish Republican Army (news - web sites) dissidents who detonated a car bomb in the town of Omagh, killing 29 people and wounding more than 300. But last week, appellate judges threw out his conviction after finding that two detectives who interrogated Murphy in 1999 rewrote their interview...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - One of five men being sued in connection with the 1998 Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for being a member of the dissident paramilitary group, the Real IRA. Seamus Daly, 34, from County Monaghan near the Irish border with the province, pleaded guilty to membership of an illegal organisation at Dublin's non-jury Special Criminal Court on Tuesday. Daly is named in a landmark civil action taken by families of the Omagh victims against five men they blame for the blast, which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins. The...