Acquittal call as Omagh bomb trial ends
The Omagh bomb trial ended today with a call to the judge to acquit the accused.
After hearing evidence for 56 days on the 56 charges against Sean Hoey, Mr Justice Weir retired to consider his verdict.
He said he had “a great deal to think about and a great deal of material to look at”.
The judge said he would make his decision as quickly as possible. It is anticipated he will return verdicts in six to eight weeks.
Sean Hoey (aged 37), an electrician from Molly Road, Jonesborough, south Armagh, denies all the charges against him involving a campaign of bombings across the North, culminating in the Omagh attack.
He has been accused of being the bomb maker behind the Omagh atrocity in 1998 in which 29 people died and hundreds more were injured.
Concluding his final submission to the judge, defence counsel Orlando Pownall QC said: “The Crown case must fail. There has to be some evidence of participation and there is, we submit, none.
“The Crown can’t prove he constructed any of these devices, particularly the Omagh bomb.”
Mr Pownall said the Crown had failed to prove its assertion that a single person constructed all the bombs, still less that the person was Sean Hoey.
The Crown case relied heavily on DNA and fibre evidence, but Mr Pownall said the DNA was unreliable, evidence had been “beefed up” by witnesses and “important exhibits have been interfered with”.
