Ruth Dudley Edwards: All terrorists should be forced to listen to the horrific experiences of the Omagh bomb families
I was all set to write this column about the enjoyable row between Sir Keir Starmer and Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr over criticism of lawyers.
Baroness Carr has said she is "deeply troubled" by criticisms of judges.
For once Starmer is in tune with most with the public rather than the legal establishment in outrage at an idiotic decision by an immigration tribunal judge to allow a large Palestinian family to gain asylum in the UK through the Ukraine refugee scheme.
Talk about opening the floodgates!
Look, your honour, self-identification is irrelevant. Palestinians are not Ukrainians.
I’ll keep the entertaining squabble between lawyers for another time. I got deflected by sheer emotion after reading so much evidence from the Omagh Bombing Inquiry.
Several of those giving evidence I knew from the Omagh civil case, in which I was heavily involved from beginning to end. I knew their stories in detail and reliving them was painful.
And then one of the forgotten came back to mind as he frequently does.
Stevie Buttle, whom I heard about from a taxi driver, was sent to Omagh on his first job on the RUC BRIT (Body and Identification Team). He was so affected by the horrors of what he saw, heard and smelt, that he began to disintegrate at work and at home.
“It got too much for Stevie,” explained his colleague, “he got hold of a body bag, put himself into it and shot himself in the head. He didn't want anyone else to have to deal with it.”
The same day that I heard about Stevie, I met Clare Short MP in a TV green room.
“What are you doing now?” she asked, so I told her about the Omagh case.
As I wrote in my book: “She looked at me with what seemed like a mixture of impatience and pity. ‘Why pick at the scabs?”
I wrote a fortnight ago about my reservations about the one-sidedness of this Omagh inquiry.
To the eternal shame of the British government, it was set up without a parallel inquiry in the Republic — the source of the bombs and bombers.
I feared — with good reason — that because there is no legal obligation on the Irish government to cooperate in any way that might cause the Republic embarrassment, they would strive to protect their security forces and blame the Brits.
At least Lord Turnbull, the inquiry chairman, seems to be concerned about this, saying in his video statement that while the job of the inquiry was to determine if steps could reasonably have been taken by the UK authorities to prevent the bombing, the responsibility for everything that happened that day “lies squarely with those terrorists who made, transported and planted the bomb”.
It was his decision that “to ensure that the voices of those affected by the atrocity are heard”, by inviting families and survivors to commemorative hearings in Omagh.
I think those convicted of terrorism should be forced to listen to such accounts of how the lives of decent, ordinary people were ruined by twisted ideology.
“Why isn’t the inquiry on giant screens at Stormont, Belfast City Hall and in O’Connell Street in Dublin?” asked that fine journalist Gail Walker.
“Why are we pretending this has nothing to do with us? That this isn’t an island-wide event of shame and humility?
"That won’t happen. Ever. Because the horror of the Troubles is matched now by the craven timidity of the peace.”
I fear she’s right.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of Aftermath: the Omagh Bombing and the Families Pursuit of Justice