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24 September 2014
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Panorama - Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told


A Panorama investigation into monitoring by the UK electronic intelligence agency – the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) – of the Omagh bombers has uncovered details of a Home Office meeting in 1999 chaired by the head of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander.

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Meeting minutes include reference to a discussion of the case for and against using telephone intercepts as evidence in court proceedings.

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The minutes reveal "an unsuccessful two year Police/Security Service job where use of intercept material may have resulted in a prosecution but where the suspects later went on to carry out a major terrorist act. This might conceivably have been avoided if the intercept material could have been used".

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Whether the "terrorist act" relates to the Omagh bombing is not known. Other possible candidates include the IRA's Canary Wharf in 1996.

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Panorama has established that GCHQ was recording mobile phone conversations between some of the bombers as they drove from the Irish Republic to the market town of Omagh.

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Twenty-nine people, and two unborn babies, were killed and more than 200 injured by the explosion.

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The revelation that the intelligence services were listening to bombers – both on the day of the bombing and in the weeks leading up to it – raises new questions about whether the single worst atrocity of the troubles could have been prevented.

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This could help explain why no one is in prison for the bombing despite a decade-long cross-border inquiry costing tens of millions of pounds.

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Panorama reports several well-placed sources saying that GCHQ were monitoring the bombers mobile phones at the request of the police's own Special Branch.

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Ray White, a former Assistant Chief Constable in charge of Crime and Special Branch for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), confirms this.

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There is confusion about exactly who knew what and when. In the days after the bombing the head of the then Royal Ulster Constabulary, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, pledged that "no stone would be left unturned".

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However, he told ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ reporter John Ware that he was unaware GCHQ had been monitoring mobiles.

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One source tells Panorama GCHQ sent details of the conversations to Northern Ireland within six hours of the bombing.

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But White tells Panorama that his former colleagues in Special Branch categorically deny this. He says they received nothing from GCHQ until the Tuesday after the bombing.

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White also says that Special Branch was expecting GCHQ to be monitoring the bombers "in real time" – so that if it was apparent a bombing was under way they could launch a pre-arranged plan to arrest them.

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When the Branch asked GCHQ why they passed nothing over for three days, White reports that GCHQ told them: "We missed it". Again, precisely what "we missed it" means is not clear.

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Panorama put a number of detailed questions about its investigation to both the Government and the PSNI. Both declined to comment.

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Although by law the GCHQ intercepts could not have been used as evidence in court against the bombers, Panorama reports that the intelligence could have directed detectives through the right doors in the hours after the bombing – a time which White describes as "the golden hours", when forensic and other evidential opportunities are at their optimum.

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The programme reports that the detectives were given nothing until three-and-a-half weeks after the bombing, and even then all they were given was a list of names. They were never told that GCHQ were onto the bombers, and the full extent of GCHQ's intercept intelligence was withheld from them.

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Even the fact that the bombers had used mobile phones to coordinate the bombing was kept secret.

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Notes to Editors

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Please note in any copy: this edition of Panorama, titled Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told, will be broadcast on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One on Monday 15 September 2008 from 8.30 to 9.00pm.

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PH

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Category: News; ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ One
Date: 15.09.2008
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