'Fair chance' Omagh bomb may have been prevented, senior officer tells inquiry

A senior police officer appointed to scrutinise the investigation into the Omagh bombing has told an inquiry there was a "fair chance" that, had procedures been followed correctly, it may have been prevented.

Merseyside DCC Michael Tonge QPM was brought in by the Policing Board in 2002 to oversee the investigation.

He added that it was "quite a shock" to see the state of the investigation when he arrived.

Failure by police to link together a pattern of attacks in 1998 may have prevented some of those involved being arrested before the bombing, the inquiry was told.

"There's a fair chance that the core group of individuals involved could have been interviewed at the very least or charged with linked previous incidents before Omagh," Tonge said.

"We were quite... not alarmed but concerned to see the state of the (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) HOLMES inquiry, given it consumed a hell of a lot of information, but the way it had been run a lot of that information was very difficult to access.

"The staffing of the initial HOLMES control room had untrained staff fulfilling roles, the people were at the wrong rank or at the wrong sort of background to do particular roles and the simple thing of standing by the Major Incident Room Standard Administrative Procedures (MIRSAP)."

After Tonge presented his report to the Policing Board in 2003, he said he was positive about the future of the Omagh investigation.

"I was very positive with where we had left this inquiry, a very good chance that people would be placed before the court to account for their conduct in this matter."

He was later asked what effect would correctly followed procedures have had on the preventability of the Omagh bomb.

Tonge said he was shocked to find that police had not linked any previous incidents during their investigations, even before the day of the bombing.

There was a "pattern" of dissident republican attacks throughout 1998 that "bore similarities".

"I mean I was probably, shocked is not too strong a word, you would expect Northern Ireland given its history and given the amount of troubles, you would look at linkages between these type of offences that didn't appear to have taken place and that was a concern."

The data recording system used by the RUC at the time was not utilised correctly or to its potential.

Tonge said that HOLMES was "a real operational tool to take the investigation forward", but lack of training in how to use it meant information was hard to find.

"If you imagine the HOLMES database on Omagh Inquiry a bit like a haystack if you are looking as needles in haystack, the way it was constructed the information was put in there didn't allow you to try and make some of the linkages you would normally find.

"So we found that a major issue, non-compliance with administrative procedures, untrained staff, role corruption - it really made it very difficult to use that in the way it was designed to be used."

Continuing to give evidence to the inquiry on Thursday was the former Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O'Loan.

She was asked about a warning received at Finner army camp in County Donegal the day before the Omagh bombing.

The document was shown on screen, the first time it has been seen.

It was handwritten and said: "REDACTED was the BOS Finner camp on the night of 14/15 Aug 1998 at 2230 hrs he received a call from a male, who sounded reasonable and did not appear to be drunk.

"His message was 'pay attention to the back roads around KINLOUGH (Leitrim) (bc 197/198?) Put patrols in the area. Inform the GS and NISF That road lead to Enniskillen, Irvinestown and Clogher.

"Forget Clogher, Omagh, Omagh, Omagh."

Baroness O'Loan said she was never told about that warning, and would have considered it important.

"I would have remembered that.

"It was very relevant to what we were investigating, we obviously had no jurisdiction over anybody in the Republic of Ireland, nor did we have any jurisdiction over the military, but apart from that, yes, of course it was relevant.

"And where had you been able to put it together with other intelligence it might have been particularly relevant."

When invited to question Baroness O'Loan the senior counsel for the police said he had been given "clear instructions to ask his questions in a non-adversarial way".

He took issue with how her evidence represented how the police had responded to a warning call received by Omagh RUC on 4 August 1993.

On Wednesday, Baroness O'Loan had criticised the lack of action by the police calling their decision to dismiss it as "bizarre and absurd".

The inquiry was shown a note outlining actions the police had taken in response to the warning call.

But Baroness O'Loan said that such actions had not been shared with her, nor had she ever seen any documentation to prove it had happened.

"An assertion of this nature is not sufficient to persuade me that something occurred and there should have been documentation which under-pinned this which would have convinced me this had been done.

"It would be variety of documentation and I have seen no such evidence which leads me to the view that I find it difficult to accept that it did happen."

PSNI counsel also questioned her recollection of a meeting she detailed with the then Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

But Baroness O'Loan was able to produce the handwritten notes from immediately after the meeting and it was shown to the inquiry.

"Immediately after (the meeting) I came out I sat in my car seat I was distressed and thought I needed to write this down."

Counsel for the inquiry deemed her recollection to be correct.