The Omagh bombing was the single worst atrocity of the Troubles.
As the journalist Shane Harrison explains, it was carried out when hopes were high in Northern Ireland that the country would never experience such violence again – four months after the signing of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998.
The car bomb on 15 August killed 29 people, including Aiden Gallagher, a 21-year-old mechanic. Hannah Moore hears from his father, Michael Gallagher, about that day, and about his two-decade legal struggle since: to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice, and to persuade the government to launch a public inquiry into whether anything could have been done to prevent it. There have been years of investigations and allegations about what the authorities knew beforehand – for example that the police ignored crucial tip-offs that something was imminent in Omagh.
The Real IRA, a dissident Republican group, claimed responsibility for the bombing, but no one has ever been convicted for it. The campaign for an inquiry has, however, finally, borne fruit. More than 26 years after the attack, a public inquiry will begin on Tuesday to hear from bereaved families and survivors about those, like Michael’s son Aiden, who they lost.
