A key forensic technique used to connect the Omagh bomb suspect to the crime contains ambiguities that may make its results unreliable, a court heard today.
An American scientist raised concerns about the DNA sampling technique and warned it was unusable in the United States for gathering evidence.
Professor Dan Krane, was speaking at the Belfast trial of Sean Hoey (37), who is accused of murdering 29 people during the "Real IRA" bombing in August 1998.
Low Copy Number DNA is one strand of the prosecution case against Mr Hoey, who denies 58 dissident republican charges, including the Omagh atrocity.
But Prof Krane said there was a "very strong expectation" that scientific factors could distort the result of such testing.
He added that only one laboratory in the United States, in New York, used LCN DNA, and that the material's uses were "never for evidence, only as an intelligence tool".
PA