Omagh bomb accused won't give evidence
Alleged Omagh bomb mass murderer Sean Hoey turned down the chance to give evidence at his trial today.
As a forensic expert claimed fibre matches which allegedly link the electrician from south Armagh to another terrorist attack were coincidental, a defence lawyer confirmed he did not intend to go into the witness box at Belfast Crown Court.
Hoey, 37, denies 56 charges connected to a series of dissident republican strikes, including the August 1998 Omagh atrocity when 29 people were killed.
As well as voice analysis and DNA profiling, the case against him is based on four fibres taken from a timer power unit recovered from a massive car bomb defused in the centre of Lisburn, Co Antrim, months before the Omagh outrage.
Another forensic scientist told the trial earlier that these finds were indistinguishable from fibres retrieved five years later during searches of Hoey’s mobile home at Molly Road, Jonesborough.
But the defence opened its case on the 52nd day of the trial by calling a specialist in textiles examination who disputed Dr Ruth Griffen’s findings.
Roger Cook told the court that thousands of fibre types from Hoey’s home were compared with the timer power unit.
He said: “What’s happened in this case is instead of having one garment from which fibres may have come, there would be hundreds, so the chances of a coincidental match would go up enormously.”
Mr Cook added that once any fibres are transferred, they start to shed almost immediately.
“Within the first two to three hours, almost all are gone,” he said.
“Within the first few days ,virtually all are gone and we’re talking about a gap of five years.”
Hoey’s barrister, Orlando Pownall QC, told Mr Justice Weir, the judge in the non-jury trial, that he expected to finish calling any witnesses and make final submissions by the end of this week.
After that, Mr Justice Weir is expected to reserve judgment.
But when the judge told Mr Pownall that it had now reached the stage where his client could indicate whether he intends to give evidence, the lawyer replied: “He does not.”
Earlier the trial heard that a detonator used in another of the terrorists’ plot Hoey is charged with underwent unexplained changes after it was first examined.
His legal team recalled a forensic scientist who studied the device and asked him to give a reason for the apparent significant differences in a length of wire attached to a detonator used with 500lb of home made explosives planted near a police station in Armagh in May 1998.
Photographs seemed to show this had been extended by up to three times from when Gordon McMillen examined the device months after the foiled attack and when a new analysis was carried out late last year.
Mr Pownall told him: “You have got no explanation for why about one and a half centimetres of wire is protruding in the photographs at the end of last year and significantly less in photographs taken at the scene.”
The forensic expert agreed with his assessment, replying: “I have no explanation.”
Wrongly-labelled exhibits have become a key issue in the trial, along with the discrediting of DNA forensic techniques used to link Hoey to a number of the terrorist offences.
The accused denies all the charges against him and even though he declined the chance to give evidence on his own behalf, the offer is expected to be put to him again after new tests are carried out tomorrow on the detonator equipment in question.
The trial was adjourned until Thursday.
