Mixed Result In Omagh Bomb Appeal

An attempt to overthrown a landmark civil court ruling - which held Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing - has been thrown out of court.

Today, he lost his appeal in Belfast as the court upheld the 2009 ruling against both McKevitt and a second accused, Liam Campbell.

In 2009, a judge found four men liable, awarding £1.6m damages after 29 people and unborn twins died in the Real IRA attack in the centre of the busy Co Tyrone town of Omagh.

Later, lawyers for the families also appealed the compensation awarded after they said it "should have been more because of the scale of the outrage".

But, the 12 relatives, who took the original 2009 case, were told that the £1.6m figure awarded to them would not be increased.

The judge also directed a civil retrial of the claims against Colm Murphy while Seamus Daly's appeal has been upheld.

The judges said they were not convinced that the trial judge would inevitably have reached the same conclusion about liability if a misdirection had not been heard.

No one has ever been convicted in a criminal court of causing the deaths of the Omagh victims, despite it being the worst such atrocity in Northern Ireland and to have caused outrage across the world.

(BMcC/KMcA)