Jon Burrows: Sole blame for Omagh bomb undeniably lies with terrorists

Public inquiries can serve noble purposes in establishing truths, learning lessons and allowing victims the opportunity to have their voices heard. One hopes this public inquiry brings truth and comfort to the bereaved of Omagh.

However, in Northern Ireland there is a tendency to blame the state for the consequences of the actions of terrorists. This ingrained culture can skew even the wisest of minds when they are examining the states response to terrorism.

The stated purpose of this inquiry is to examine whether the state could have prevented the Omagh bomb. When answering this legitimate question, the inquiry should never lose sight of the fact that the sole blame for the atrocity lies with terrorists.

The Omagh bomb is an atrocity where one must understand the methodology of the bombers to realise that they did everything possible to prevent the police evacuating people away from the 500lb car bomb or safely defusing it. Indeed, everything the terrorists did maximised the likelihood of a massacre.

In 1998 the Real IRA waged a car bomb campaign, targeting towns across Northern Ireland, including Moira, Lisburn and Banbridge. The intention was to destroy the peace process.

Several bombs detonated, others like the 600lb car bomb in the centre of Lisburn were defused thanks to the skill and courage of the security forces.

However, the terrorists were determined that their bombs would explode and bomb warnings became vaguer and shorter. This served a dual purpose of maximising the chance of bombs exploding and minimising the forensic opportunities that defused devices afford.

The pattern of more vague bomb warnings reached a deadly culmination on August 15, 1998 when the terrorists parked the car bomb at the bottom of Market Street in Omagh.

Whether this was the intended parking spot is unclear, but this location was the narrowest part of the town centre and where the buildings either side of the road where at their highest.

If you wanted to concentrate the blast of a car bomb in Omagh town, this is where you would place it.

The bombers’ choice of a Saturday afternoon further maximised the risk to human life for two reasons: footfall was at a peak, as was the number of cars parked in the town. The bomb was a needle in a haystack.

After the bombers parked the car bomb, a scout car drove them to the Irish republic and three coded bomb warning calls were made.

The first, to UTV, stated “Bomb Court House Omagh, Main Street, 30 minutes”. Another to UTV simply said “15 mins, Omagh town”. The final call to the Samaritans said the bomb would go off in Main Street, Omagh “200 yards up from the courthouse”.

These warnings were misleading. There is no Main Street in Omagh - a catastrophic error. The bomb was a quarter of a mile down from the courthouse, not 200 yards up from it.

Therefore, instead of evacuating people away from the bomb, the police directed them towards it.

One theory is the terrorists planned to leave the bomb at the top of the town but could not get parked and accomplices who rang in the warnings were unaware of the location change. However, the bombers could have aborted the attack by driving the car out of Omagh or parking the car where they did and choosing not to arm the bomb. That however, risked leaving a treasure trove of forensics.

Instead, one of them reached into the front passenger footwell and armed the deadly bomb. An eyewitness recalls a man gingerly closing the car door - evidently, he was making sure it did not explode when he was beside it. When it came to self-preservation, the bombers made no mistakes.

As the bombers fled the scene, RUC officers ran towards danger, searching for a loaded down car and trying to evacuate shoppers away from the courthouse. The officers were acutely aware they were running towards danger; two weeks earlier a car bomb had exploded in Banbridge town centre when the same codeword was used.

The bomb detonated after 3pm, causing a scene that resembled a war zone. The blast severed the sewers. A river of blood flowed down Market Street.

The police frantically searched under rubble for survivors, administered first aid and used fire extinguishers to put out people who were ablaze. Later, officers wrapped dead bodies in blankets and laid them out in an alleyway out of public view to preserve their dignity.

Safely evacuating Omagh town that fateful day was an impossible task, but RUC officers displayed faultless courage and humanity.

The sole blame for the atrocity lies with terrorists and this impregnable fact should be written through the inquiry’s final report like a stick of rock.

Jon Burrows is a former senior PSNI officer