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Press Releases
Panorama - Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told
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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 Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
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 Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 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 Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
One on Monday 15 September 2008 from 8.30 to 9.00pm.
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