Omagh families win landmark case

The Real IRA was also found liable for the attack in today's ruling.

After more than a decade it was a major breakthrough for those who demanded justice.

The relatives launched the action at the High Court in Belfast after the failure of the police to secure a criminal conviction over the 1998 Real IRA bombing in the Co Tyrone town.

They sued five men and the Real IRA as an organisation for up to £14m (€16m) in a case which made legal history when it sat to hear evidence in both Belfast and Dublin.

The case opened in April last year and completed hearing evidence in March.

Mr Justice Morgan - set to become the North's next Lord Chief Justice - took three months to sift through the evidence and produce his judgment that the case was proved against the four men, none of whom attended the hearings.

McKevitt is a founding member of the Real IRA who is in prison in the Republic.

Co Louth farmer Campbell is in custody in the North facing a bid to extradite him to Lithuania to face arms smuggling charges.

Murphy, also from Louth, was found guilty in Dublin's Special Criminal Court of conspiring to cause the Omagh bomb but his conviction was later quashed.

A fifth man accused by the relatives, Seamus McKenna, was cleared today.

The only man to face criminal charges over the Omagh killings, Sean Hoey (aged 38) from Jonesborough, South Armagh, was acquitted in December 2007.

Judge Mr Justice Morgan awarded more than £1.6m (€1.84m) in damages to 12 named relatives who took the action.

The judge said it was clear that McKevitt was a senior figure in the dissident republican group at the time of the bombing and was heavily involved in the procurement of explosives.

He based much of this on evidence obtained by an undercover FBI agent, who infiltrated the organisation in the years after the attack.

"He held and has always held a significant leadership role in the Real IRA," the judge said of McKevitt.

Mr Morgan also based his findings in regard to Murphy on information obtained by the American agent, David Rupert.

The judge said he was satisfied that Campbell was a member of the Army Council of the Real IRA at the time of the bombing.

"I consider that the case against him is overwhelming," the judge said.

A mainstay of the families' case was records and traces on two phones used by the bombers on the day of the attack.

The judge said evidence proved that both Campbell and Daly were in possession of the phones before and after the attack.

After the hearing, one of the relatives, Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son, James, was killed in the attack, said he was delighted with the outcome.

"I never built my hopes up too much after what happened before," he said, "but I'm absolutely over the moon."

The judge said the case against Seamus McKenna was dismissed. It had been based on evidence from his estranged wife and he considered her an unreliable witness.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan died in the bombing, was delighted to have finally succeeded in their long battle.

"Eight years has just come to an end all of a sudden. It is a result better than we could ever have imagined."

Clearly stunned by the magnitude of the success, he said: "We have sent out an important message to terrorists and their victims around the world - you now have a way of challenging those who've murdered your loved ones.

"I think it is a tremendous moral victory for the families."

Monetary awards were always secondary for the families, who simply wanted the guilty men named in public.

"We will never collect a penny," he predicted.

He thanked the police in both the North and the Republic, their legal team and the wider community for their support.

He pointed out that they raised £1.2m (€1.38m) to fund the case through public appeal and then went to the British government for the balance and it had little alternative but to help them.

Stanley McCombe, whose wife died in the bombing, said he was absolutely delighted at the judgment.

"It is a result we hoped for but didn't expect. We didn't build our hopes up because we've been let down so many times before.

"But a 5-1 win is a victory in anyone's eyes."

He added: "It was never about money. We can stand and say that these guys are responsible for Omagh, that's what we wanted."

He said the campaigning would continue and the relatives would not rest until they got the public inquiry they have sought for so long.

"We have to carry on fighting for that. There is nobody doing time for 29 murders and we have to have a public inquiry to see where things went wrong."

The eight-year legal battle cost an estimated £2m (€2.3m), with the relatives having been backed in their fundraising efforts by, among others, the Daily Mail newspaper and former US president Bill Clinton.

Outside the courthouse, the relatives thanked all those who helped them in their long quest for justice.

Mr Gallagher also had a message for the four men found liable for the bombing: "You think you were clever enough to cover up your tracks and get away with this. You didn't figure on people like us standing up and using all the resources of the law.

"What we have done here today is within the law. What the Real IRA did was outside the law and we have proven that, if the criminal justice system is not capable of delivering some justice, at least civil law is and that's a very strong message we send around the world."

Because the four men who the damages were awarded against all live in the Republic, those named by the judge as recipients will have to go to the High Court in Dublin should they wish to enforce the judgment.

Under the legal principle of Comity, the general rule is that courts in one jurisdiction will enforce a judgment made in another, said a legal expert.

Given that the Irish authorities co-operated in the court action - the case actually sat in Dublin to hear some of the evidence - it could be assumed there would be no trouble in enforcing the judgment.

Seizure orders on property such as homes - one of the men is a farmer - could be made to ensure the money was paid.

Meanwhile the families revealed they were to go to the Appeal Court to try to overturn Mr Justice Morgan's ruling that it was not appropriate for him to order the payment of exemplary damages.

If that is successful they could have an order of many millions in damages made against the Real IRA and the four found responsible for the bombing.

Jason McCue, the family's solicitor, said: "We are going to appeal and this is the sort of case that could get the highest award ever in the UK.

"At the moment we have got the highest ever compensatory damages in Northern Ireland."