Inquiry told PSNI had 19 'firm suspects' for Omagh attack

Updated / Wednesday, 11 Nov 2026 18:27

The police in Northern Ireland had a list of 19 "firm suspects" for the Omagh bombing, a public inquiry has been told.

It was drawn up in February 2003 by the senior PSNI officer who was in charge of the investigation at the time.

It had been whittled down from a much longer list of 66 suspects as the murder investigation progressed.

The revised list included names of those understood to have had direct involvement in the construction and delivery of the bomb as well as dissident leaders.

Also on the list were more peripheral figures believed to have supplied mobile phones for use in the attack.

Some of those named included those accused of involvement in the attack in previous civil and criminal proceedings.

They include Colm Murphy, Liam Campbell, Seamus Daly and Seamus McKenna, Sean Hoey and Michael McKevitt.

Murphy, Campbell, McKevitt and Daly were found liable in a civil action. Mr McKenna was found not liable. He died later in a workplace accident.

Mr Hoey was acquitted at his criminal trial.

Others were suspects who were arrested but never charged. A number of those on the list are now dead.

The list was discussed during today's evidence at the Omagh Bombing Inquiry.

The hearing was told this phase of the inquiry's work was about establishing a "working hypothesis" of who had been involved and that additional names could be added to a list of suspects.

The inquiry was established to discover whether the UK authorities could have done anything to prevent the 1998 atrocity.

Twenty-nine people were murdered, including a mother pregnant with twins, when the bomb exploded in the town's Market Street.

The attack was part of an attempt by dissident republicans to wreck the emerging peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

Most of those named on the list came from the north Louth and south Armagh areas.

The inquiry also heard that a woman who saw two men get out of the bomb car in Omagh, was later taken to the social security office in Dundalk by gardaí to see if she could identify a suspect.

The inquiry was told the witness, who was in an unmarked garda car, was told to comb her hair as an agreed signal to a plainclothes inspector on the street if she recognised anyone.

The inquiry heard that the man she had picked out was linked in a garda intelligence document to having been in Omagh on the day of the attack.

The gardaí also had information that he had been confronted in a Dundalk bar by another republican over his alleged role in the murderous attack.

The inquiry was also told that gardaí had made 99 arrests as part of its investigation into the Omagh atrocity.

Thirty-nine people had been detained for direct questioning about the bombing.

The others had been questioned as part of other enquiries or during car theft investigations.

The inquiry heard that in late 2015, the PSNI had carried out a review of the Omagh bomb investigation to establish if any new steps could be taken to move it forward.

The officer responsible reported that no such steps existed.

He recommended that the case be passed to the PSNI's Legacy Investigation Branch where it remains today.

It was confirmed that meant there was currently no active investigation into the bombing.