12 December 2001

Ombudsman’s Omagh report criticises police leadership

Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan has published a report criticising the way in which the Royal Ulster Constabulary headed up the investigation into the Omagh bomb of 15 August 1998 which killed 29 people and two unborn children.

The report released on Wednesday December 12 by the Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan has described the leadership and judgment of Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan who headed the investigation into the Omagh Bomb as “seriously flawed”.

She said that ultimately “this report is about a failure of leadership.” She added: “The victims, their families, the people of Omagh and officers of the RUC were let down by defective leadership, poor judgement and a lack of the urgency. This should not have been the response to an incident which resulted in 29 deaths.”

In addition Mrs O’Loan’s report outlines clearly that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (now the Police Service of Northern Ireland) had possessed prior knowledge that an attack was going to take place in Omagh – eleven days before the Real IRA bomb went off in Omagh City Centre on August 15.

On August 4, the RUC received an anonymous ten-minute telephone call warning that there would be a terrorist attack on police Omagh on August 15. The officer who received this call, according to the Police Ombudsman took to the correct action and informed Special Branch in Enniskillen. The report concluded that this officer “was and remains blameless.”

However, the report detailed that Special Branch, who had knowledge of a threat, did not pass on the warning. The report concluded this was in direct contravention of the RUC Force Order. The Chief Constable has since said that it was acceptable that Special Branch did not pass on the information received on August 4. In relation to this, the report states: “He is wrong.”

The report also focused on the reliability of a police informant known as “Kevin Fulton” which initially triggered Mrs O’Loan’s investigation following allegation in a Sunday newspaper which claimed the RUC knew about Omagh beforehand.

The Police Ombudsman’s report indicates that although the RUC received information from Mr Fulton stating the Real IRA “was about to do something North over the next few days” three days before the Omagh bomb went off, and received information from him on other separate occasions before this, they failed to assess this information in the appropriate context. The report maintains that the evidence supplied by Fulton was indeed “reliable” and should have been treated as such.

The report makes six recommendations (aimed at making the current investigation into Omagh more transparent) that Mrs O’Loan said she hoped would not be ignored. The report concludes: “The persons responsible for the Omagh bombing are the terrorists who planned an executed the atrocity. Nothing contained in this report should detract from that clear and unequivocal fact. This Report presents a window of opportunity, it is not designed to be destructively critical and it is not directed at the foundations and most of the superstructure of the RUC. Leadership failure is identified but the Recommendations are designed to recover, as far as possible, lost ground.”

The Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan launched a scathing attack on what he described as its “gross and erroneous conclusions” and would be investigating legal action to get the Ombudsman’s report quashed. (AMcE)