Only Irishman convicted of Real IRA’s 1998 Omagh car-bomb massacre acquitted in Dublin retrial

Man convicted of Omagh bomb acquitted in retrial

DUBLIN — The only man ever convicted of involvement in the 1998 car-bomb slaughter in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh has been acquitted in a retrial.

Twenty-nine people, mostly women and children, were killed on Aug. 15, 1998, when a car bomb planted by the Real IRA splinter group detonated. None of the IRA dissidents involved has been successfully prosecuted.

Irish businessman Colm Murphy was originally convicted in 2002 of supplying the bombers’ cell phones. Murphy was freed three years later after Ireland’s top appeals court ruled that two detectives illegally rewrote Murphy’s interrogation statements.

Ireland’s main anti-terrorist court, which handled Murphy’s retrial, ruled Wednesday that none of the interrogation evidence could be relied upon as evidence.