Families meet Inquiry chair as search for Omagh bomb justice advances

Family members of the victims met with the chair of Omagh Bombing Inquiry this week for the first time.

The 25th anniversary of the bombing - the single biggest atrocity in the history of the Troubles - is on Tuesday.

Twenty-nine people, including a woman who was pregnant with twins, were killed and 220 others injured when a 500lb car bomb exploded on Market Street on August 15, 1998.

Three of those who died - Sean McLaughlin (12), James Barker (12) and Oran Doherty (8) - were schoolboys from Buncrana.

Twelve-year-old Fernando Blasco Baselga and Rocio Abad Ramos (23) were part of a group from Spain on an exchange programme in Buncrana who died in the blast while visiting Omagh.

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Ann McCombe (48) was a native of Ballindrait who lived in Omagh while Aiden Gallagher (21) was the son of Michael Gallagher, who has close family connections in the St Johnston-Carrigans area.

This week, some of the bereaved families met with Lord Alan Turnbull, the senior Scottish judge who has been appointed to head up an independent statutory inquiry.

Lord Turnbull requested the informal sit-down with the bereaved family members, who included Stanley McCombe, who lost his wife Ann, and Aiden Gallagher’s father, mother and sister, Michael and Patsy Gallagher and Cat Gallagher-Wilkinson.

“That was our first meeting with Lord Turnbull and it was a great gesture,” Mr McCombe told Donegal Live. “We met with him as a sort of get-to-know-you talk. The terms of reference for the inquiry have yet to be finalised, but we are fortunate that we can have some sort of an input. We are just ordinary people, but it was great that we can have that input. We have been at the forefront and it is only right and proper that we have been able to meet face-to-face.”

Stanley McCombe.

Campaigners are hopeful that the terms of reference will be finalised in the ‘coming weeks’. Lord Turnbull was appointed by the secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris earlier this year to probe the 1998 attack, for which the Real IRA claimed responsibility.

Lord Turnbull was previously a prosecutor on the Lockerbie bombing trial.

Last month, some family members met with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee.

Mr McCombe said: “They listened, but they couldn’t commit to very much given that the terms of reference haven’t been finalised.

“We are pleased and it has been a lot of weight off our minds to get to where we are. This time last year, we didn’t know where we were going with it. We were campaigning and fighting and trying to get meetings set up with the governments.”

Lord Turnbull has vowed to conduct an ‘independent and robust inquiry in order to establish the truth’.

In July 2021, a Belfast court ruled there should be a new investigation into whether the attack, by the Real IRA, could have been prevented

Mr McCombe said: “We live in hope on what will be in the inquiry and how wide it can be. We have a picture in our own mind.

“We know the build-up and we all know what happened. They knew that a bomb was prepared and they knew that a bomb was coming across the border as it was monitored to Aughnacloy. Why did no-one know where it was going? That bomb could’ve been prevented from going into Omagh.”