A report for the Police Ombudsman in the North has revealed that the RUC Special Branch had information about a planned attack in Omagh eleven days before the town was bombed. In 1998, 29 people were killed when a bomb exploded in the busy centre of the town.
The findings of the report, carried out by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, is to be officially released next week. But details of it, emerging today, are set to raise new concerns about the RUC investigation into the atrocity.
The most damaging disclosure in the report is a claim that an anonymous caller to the RUC in Omagh on 4 August (eleven days before the bombing) warned that the Real IRA was planning an attack on the County Tyrone town on 15 August.
The RUC officer who took the call told Special Branch about it, but it seems that this information was not passed on by the Special Branch to senior officers in the force.
Other flaws in the RUC investigation into Omagh identified by the report include the use of inexperienced staff and a lack of resources, and insufficient exchange of information with Gardaí in the Republic, who carried out their own investigation.
This evening a spokesman for the Police service in the North rejected the Ombudsman's report, saying it contained serious deficiencies, significant factual inaccuracies, and misunderstandings.
