Omagh bombing lawyers question whether fingerprints were ever sent to Scotland Yard

The Omagh Bombing Inquiry’s legal team has said it understood that no fingerprint material relating to the atrocity was sent by police to the UK’s main antiterrorist hub for analysis. Lead counsel to the inquiry, Paul Greaney, told the inquiry on Monday that “my understanding is that no fingerprint material was sent relating to the Omagh bombing to New Scotland Yard”.Fingerprint expert Kevin Kershaw, responding to questions from Greaney, said he would have expected any fingerprints found to have been sent to London “because of the type of offence, this was a terrorist offence and ... New Scotland Yard was the hub of the UK terrorist fingerprint team”. He agreed there was nothing in the materials he had seen to indicate it did in fact occur. READ MOREA total of 31 people, including unborn twins, died and hundreds were injured when a car bomb planted by dissident republican group the Real IRA exploded in the centre of Omagh on August 15th, 1998.The inquiry into the atrocity, which opened in 2024 under Lord Alan Turnbull, is examining whether the atrocity could reasonably have been prevented by British state authorities. Its third chapter, which opened in Belfast last month, is examining how the bombing was carried out, and who was responsible. On Tuesday, Greaney told the Inquiry the position of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was that it was “usual” at the time for such fingerprints to be sent to New Scotland Yard for analysis, but the body acknowledged it has been “unable to locate any written policy or other document” which established that this had taken place. “There is no document that PSNI can point to that establishes that fingerprints relating to the Omagh bombing were sent to New Scotland Yard,” he said. However, he added “no documentation ... doesn’t determine the question of whether, in fact, it was sent, because it is obviously a possibility it was sent without it being documented”.Asked by Greaney for his view “of the likelihood as to whether fingerprint material was submitted” without generating documentation, Kershaw replied: “I would have expected a considerable amount of documentation available to me to review.”The expert witness also said that, at New Scotland Yard, “I wouldn’t expect anything less than very clear documentation relating to any submission made by any police force to the fingerprint hub.”The inquiry also heard on Tuesday from Garda Det Supt Emmet Casserly, who gave evidence on the investigation in the Republic which was launched following the explosion, including house-to-house inquiries and a vehicle checkpoint near the address in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, where the car used to transport the bomb was stolen. He said the “decades”-long investigation generated “1,077 separate lines of inquiry”, statements were taken from “over 480 people”, 99 arrests were made and there were 92 recorded searches, and, he said, information exchange between An Garda Síochána and the RUC was “seamless”. Asked by Greaney about CCTV evidence, Casserly noted the limitations of CCTV coverage and quality in 1998 compared to the present day, and said this meant “there was very, very little or none; no CCTV produced which was of any use to the inquiry or investigation”.“So .. there was no CCTV footage harvested by the Garda investigation team,” Greaney asked. “That’s correct,” the senior garda said. Asked whether this had limited the investigation team in identifying suspects, capturing the sequence of events, and corroborating the statements of eyewitnesses, he replied, “it did”. The inquiry continues.