Seventy miles separate Omagh from Belfast. This morning it will seem like the longest journey ever taken for the families of victims of the worst atrocity in the Troubles.
The moment when Mr Justice Morgan delivers his verdicts in a remarkable High Court action, the first time that victims have sued alleged terrorists for damages, is likely to be their last chance of a glimpse of justice.
Almost 11 years have elapsed since a Real IRA unit parked a car bomb on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the main street of the busy Co Tyrone market town. The maroon Vauxhall Cavalier contained 500lb of explosive. The splinter group of the Provisional IRA gave misleading telephone warnings and the bomb exploded in the area to which police were herding shoppers.
Twenty-nine people were murdered, among them Avril Monaghan, who was carrying twin girls at nearly full term. Nine of the dead were children. The death toll included citizens of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain. The victims were Protestants, Catholics and one Mormon. Many of the 300 injured were maimed or lost limbs.
Tony Blair, who was then Prime Minister, promised that no stone would be left unturned in the quest to bring the perpetrators to justice. Yet still nobody is in jail for the bombing.
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Colm Murphy, a convicted Provisional IRA member, was found guilty in January 2002 of conspiracy to cause an explosion and sentenced to fourteen years, but his conviction was quashed three years later.
In September 2006 Sean Gerard Hoey, Murphy’s nephew, was put on trial for the 29 murders. He was acquitted in December the next year.
Sir Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, admitted that it was unlikely that there would be further prosecutions. And that might have been that, had it not been for the Omagh victims’ group, which adopted Edmund Burke’s quotation “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” as its compass.
It was Victor Barker, a Surrey solicitor who lost his cherished son James, 12, who came up with the idea of taking a civil case against five individuals alleged to be behind the bombing. Such actions require cases to be decided on the balance of probability — a less stringent test than the proof beyond reasonable doubt required in criminal trials.
In 1991 a High Court judge ruled that Michael Brookes had killed Lynn Siddons, a 16-year-old who in 1978 was stabbed 40 times, and an award of £10,641 was made in damages. The original police case against Brookes was found to have been bungled, and he was later convicted of murder in a fresh criminal investigation.
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In 1998 Tony Diedrick was named by a judge as the killer of Joan Francisco, a doctor who had been strangled by a vacuum cleaner wire four years earlier. The judge awarded Dr Francisco’s family £50,000, despite acknowledging that there was “no direct evidence” against Diedrick, but he too was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to life.
Michael Gallagher, who lost his son Aiden, 21, has acted as the chief spokesman and organiser of the families’ civil action. “It’s a great relief to be where we are, because it has been a long and difficult journey,” Mr Gallagher told The Times yesterday. “There were times when we thought we couldn’t go any further.”
Along the way the Omagh campaigners has received support from U2, Bob Geldof, Eddie Irvine, the racing driver, and the public through donations to the multi-million legal action.
In nervous anticipation of Mr Justice Morgan’s judgment Mr Gallagher added: “Regardless of the outcome the struggle has been worthwhile. At least we have created a precedent for others around the world who find themselves in our situation. This is the first time that any victims in the world have sued the alleged perpetrators. Terrorists will no longer have just the police to worry about: the families of their victims will be coming after them.”