Omagh bombing: ‘I believe people in privileged positions have protected those responsible’

As Aiden Gallagher left to go shopping in Omagh on Saturday, August 15th, 1998, he turned to his father and said: “I won’t be long.”

“He stood just in the doorway in the kitchen,” says his father, Michael. “He was buying a pair of jeans and he was asking my wife what size would he get, that sort of thing ... We had what I would describe as pleasant conversation, and that’s a nice memory to have.

“I’ll never forget, as he walked out for the last time and looked back and he says, ‘I won’t be long.’

“That’s a word we’re never allowed to say now as we’re leaving, but that was the last we saw of Aiden.”

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The 21-year-old was one of the 31 victims of the Real IRA car bomb that exploded in Omagh that afternoon, 25 years ago, killing 29 men, women and children, and unborn twins in what was the worst single atrocity of the Troubles.

Car-mad Aiden worked with his father, a self-employed mechanic, in their garage and was the apple of his mother Patsy’s eye.

“There was only one man in my wife’s life, and that was Aiden,” says his father. “He used to go out with friends at the weekend and come in at maybe one, two o’clock in the morning and come into our bedroom and he would sit on the edge of the bed and have a yarn with my wife.

“I could see a pall of smoke rising, but I had no idea in the world where it was”

—  Michael Gallagher on the day of the bombing

“I would say, ‘Aiden, would you please go to your bed? We can talk about this in the morning’.”

That Saturday afternoon, the weather was “the best day we had that summer”, says Michael. He was working in the garage when he heard an “almighty explosion”.

He drove home. “I could see a pall of smoke rising, but I had no idea in the world where it was.”

At home, he and Patsy and their daughter, Cat, put on the television. “There was a news flash to say there was a serious explosion in Omagh and there were fatalities.

“After a while Tony Blair came on, and I said to them, ‘put off the TV, and don’t put it on again’. Cat put a candle in the window, and I went to go as close as I could get to the bomb scene. As I drove in, I could see people walking out with blood coming from their heads.”

At the cordon, a soldier told him to go to the hospital. Michael went back and forth three times, checking the hospital for Aiden and then going home to see if he had returned.

The third time, he found Aiden’s friend Michael in one of the wards. “He was badly burned ... He said the two of them were told to move down the street and they had just started walking when the explosion happened, and he said the last thing he remembered was literally just flying through the air.”

[ Government asks UK for Omagh bomb inquiry terms of reference ]

Relatives were told to gather in the town’s leisure centre. Michael waited there with his brother James - a fireman who had helped in the rescue effort in Omagh that day – until the early hours of the next morning.

They were then asked to go to Lisanelly army camp, where a temporary mortuary had been set up. Together they identified Aiden’s body.

As Michael drove home “the sun was starting to rise, and you could hear the birds, and it was the worst thing I ever had to do was go into that house and tell my wife and two children, two girls, that Aiden wouldn’t be coming home.”

It was, he says, “the beginning of a nightmare.”

He knew other bereaved families, “because Omagh’s a pretty small town”. They came together and formed the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group “to offer each other support and try and learn what happened”. As time went on they found they had become campaigners for truth and justice, with Michael at the forefront.

“As we sit here, 25 years on, not one person has been charged with murder at Omagh,” he says. “It’s quite horrendous.”

“Given all that was known, all that’s in the public domain and all that’s there behind closed doors, I think it is probably highly unlikely that anyone ever will be held accountable.

“I do believe that people in privileged positions, who had been in government, have protected those who were responsible for this crime.”

We were made promises, both publicly and privately, that the governments have never lived up to, both the British and the Irish

The Omagh bomb came only a few months after the Belfast Agreement, signed in April 1998. When he looks back on newspaper clippings from the time, he sees how “fragile” the peace was.

At the time, he says, “we were made promises, both publicly and privately, that the governments have never lived up to, both the British and the Irish. My own personal opinion is the governments did not have the political will to solve this crime.”

Those who died, he says, were sacrificed. “We were the victims of the Good Friday Agreement, and the 32nd victim of Omagh was truth.”

In 2008 four men – the Real IRA’s chief of staff, Michael McKevitt, as well as three other dissident republicans - Colm Murphy, Seamus Daly and Liam Campbell – were found liable for the bombing in a civil court; a fifth, Seamus McKenna, was cleared because the evidence against him was deemed unreliable. McKevitt, Murphy and McKenna are now dead.

[ Funeral takes place of man found liable for Omagh bombing ]

In 2021, in response to a judicial review Michael Gallagher took in 2013, a high court judge ruled there was a “real prospect” the bombing could have been prevented and recommended an investigation on both sides of the Border.

In February the UK government ordered an independent statutory inquiry into the bombing, which Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said would “focus specifically on the four grounds which the court held as giving rise to plausible arguments that the bombing could have been prevented”.

These relate to the handling and sharing of intelligence, the use of mobile phone analysis, whether there was “advance knowledge or reasonable means of knowledge of the bomb” and “whether disruption operations could or should have been mounted, which may have helped prevent the tragedy”.

Michael says: “There’s no doubt in my mind Omagh was a preventable atrocity.” He has been convinced of this for more than 20 years, since he read the report by then police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in 2001.

“When you look at all the information that was available, and how that was managed and disseminated, if that had been dealt with on both sides of the Border, there’s no doubt in my mind there would have been a more positive outcome on August 15th, [1998].”

Senior Scottish judge Alan Turnbull has been appointed to chair the inquiry, and the families are awaiting the terms of reference from the UK government.

They are also waiting to hear from the Irish Government. Following a meeting with the families in June, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said the Government would consider the “next steps in this jurisdiction” once there was “clarity on the nature of the UK inquiry”.

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee pledged that “as has been done in relation to a number of historical inquiries, this State will co-operate fully as may be required.”

“They really had just a one-liner, that we can’t do anything until we see the terms of reference,” says Michael. “We feel the Irish Government should have their own independent inquiry.”

“I wonder how in under God I survived. How my wife survived? She must be an extremely strong person”

—  Michael Gallagher

In a statement to The Irish Times, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said that since the June meeting draft terms of reference for the UK inquiry have been shared with the Government.

“The Government understands that the chair of the inquiry intends to seek the views of those most affected by the bombing and that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intends to publish the terms of reference after consultation with the chair.

“Officials stand ready to engage with members of the inquiry team as soon as they are appointed,” the spokeswoman said.

It is not clear when the UK inquiry will begin hearing evidence. In a statement, the Northern Ireland Office said Lord Turnbull would “be seeking views from those affected about the inquiry”.

“Once the inquiry’s terms of reference are finalised, Lord Turnbull will then begin the conduct of the inquiry.”

“Aiden could have been here today,” says Michael. “I think at the very beginning, I took a view that this was going to be a long haul, but I never could have imagined I would be sitting here, 25 years after the event.”

The thought that it could have been prevented is, he says, “a difficult scenario to come to terms with. What could have been, what should have been.”

The friend Aiden was with that day, who survived the bomb, is “married now, two beautiful young children, and I’ve no doubt Aiden would have been the same.

“It’s completely changed our lives forever. It’s like, did you ever have a sore tooth, and then the toothache went away, but there’s still that in the background, that aching?”

When he looks back, “I wonder how in under God I survived. How my wife survived? She must be an extremely strong person.

“Aiden’s granda, who was 60 years older than Aiden, died 10 days after Aiden died. I don’t remember a lot about it but I remember being at Aiden’s funeral, and Patsy’s father, you could just see him, he was saying, ‘I should be in that coffin, not Aiden’.

“How do you survive? For me, I dug very deep inside me, and I think it was the strength I took from all the good people I met in life, not the bad people, all the good people.

“I think that also stopped me from becoming bitter and angry. I was fortunate, that I did meet some good people and it was their energy and their strengths and their memory that no doubt carried me through.”

“People will get on and do what they have to do and more forward, but there will always be ghosts in that part of Omagh”

Michael is now 74. “I should be doing what I want to do at my age, and not doing, unfortunately, what I have to do.

“I just want some space and some time for myself, you know? But hopefully that will come,” he says.

“We cannot walk away from what happened. You can’t shake that off. It’s the thinking time that’s the most dangerous, when you’re lying in bed at night and you can’t sleep.

“Some of the people I worked closely with, who lost family members, have now themselves passed away, and Omagh’s not alone.”

He references the UK government’s controversial legacy legislation, expected to become law next month: “The sad reality is the vast majority of people who lost their lives in the Troubles, on all sides, have never seen any justice, in fact even worse they’ve never seen any truth, and now the [UK] government is committed to taking justice away from them.”

On Sunday, Michael and his family will attend a service to remember the victims of the bombing at the memorial garden in Omagh.

Ahead of the ceremony, Michael demonstrates how the 31 mirrors – representing the 31 lives lost – combine to shine light on to the obelisk that now stands on the spot, at the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb exploded.

“It will always be a sacred space for a large number of people, those who were directly affected and those who were at the scene that day,” says Michael.

“Because of the pressure of life, people will get on and do what they have to do and more forward, but there will always be ghosts in that part of Omagh.”