A telephone warning to the Defence Forces’ Finner Camp in Donegal ending with the words “Omagh, Omagh, Omagh” was made the night before an explosion ripped through the Co Tyrone town, the Omagh bombing inquiry has been told.
Details of the telephone call were given to the inquiry, led by Andrew Turnbull, by the former BBC investigative reporter John Ware, who has produced a number of programmes about the bombing.
The telephone warning urged that An Garda Síochána and Defence Forces “check the back roads” for an explosives-laden car travelling across the Border from the Republic, finishing with the words “Omagh, Omagh, Omagh”.
The call came just hours before the Real IRA attack on August 15th, 1998, killed 29 people and injured 220 others, the worst single attack in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the second deadliest overall.
The warning was relayed in a note headed “BDS Finner”, which is understood to stand for barracks detachment staff at Finner Camp, the administrative office in the Donegal camp, though it is unclear to whom it was sent.
The caller had “sounded sober”, Ware told the inquiry, on the back of information given to him by a confidential source who was “reliable and well-placed”, but whom he could not name.
The Omagh inquiry, which began last year, must decide on whether the Omagh attack more than 28 years ago could reasonably have been prevented by the British government and its agencies.
It is not known if this warning was passed on to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. A 2009 inquiry by the UK’s intelligence services commissioner Peter Gibson found “no evidence whatever” that warnings were received from the Garda.