Man charged with supplying Omagh bomb car

The man arrested on Tuesday in connection with the 1998 Omagh bombing has appeared in court today.

Anthony Joseph Donegan, 34, from Dundalk, appeared before Enniskillen Magistrates Court on Wednesday charged with supplying a car to terrorists between 11 August 1998 and 16 August 1998.

A detective sergeant told the court that when he charged and cautioned the accused at Omagh police station on Monday, he had replied "not guilty".

He said he believed he could connect the accused with the charge and the resident magistrate remanded the defendant in custody.

The accused is due to appear by video-link at Omagh courthouse on 8 March.

Last month, relatives of those who died in the bombing expressed “total shock” after the only man jailed over the 1998 atrocity succeeded in an appeal against his conviction.

At Dublin's Court of Criminal Appeal, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns granted a retrial of the case of Colm Murphy, 51, who was jailed for 14 years in 2002 for conspiring to cause the explosion.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden died in the bombing, said: "It seems to me now that's the number of deaths the people in this country are willing to accept - 31 innocent people including two unborn children, and not one person being held to account for that."

Twenty-nine men, women and children died and hundreds were injured in the car bomb attack in the Co Tyrone town on 15 August 1998.

The bombing, which was later claimed by dissident republican paramilitary group the Real IRA, was the worst single atrocity in the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’.

(MB/SP)