FBI agent tells McKevitt trial of Omagh bomb attack blunder

Dozens of people were killed in the Omagh bombing in August 1998 because Continuity IRA members parked their car bomb in the wrong place, it was claimed today.

Mr David Rupert, the chief prosecution witness in the trial of alleged "Real IRA" leader Mr Michael McKevitt, told the Special Criminal Court this afternoon that he met Mr McKevitt for the first time a year after the bombing, which killed 29 people and two unborn babies.

Mr Rupert, a paid agent of the FBI and British Secret Services, said he was told by Mr McKevitt at their first ever meeting in September 1999 that the bomb was a joint operation between the "Real IRA" and the Continuity IRA. He said the Continuity IRA had stolen the car the device was transported in and had driven it into the Co Tyrone town. The "Real IRA" had built the bomb itself.

However the bombers failed to find a parking space in the agreed place, so they parked the car further up the main street of the town, away from the area where the telephoned bomb warning said it would be. As a result, scores of people were ushered into the path of the explosion, resulting in 29 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

The agent said Mr McKevitt was "extremely upset" at this, as he felt "the lads should have just driven it out in the country and let it go" rather than park in the wrong place.

Mr McKevitt was also angered by the fact that even though it was a joint operation, Mr Ruairí Ó Bradaigh, the president of the Continuity IRA's political wing, Republican Sinn Féin made a speech denouncing the bombing and the "Real IRA", who had claimed responsibility.

Mr Rupert said he was introduced to Mr McKevitt by a member of the Continuity IRA, Mr Michael Donnelly. He said he had met Mr Donnelly at a Republican Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in November, 1998 and, as he was more militarily-inclined than the "do-nothings" in the RSF, decided to align himself with him.

Mr Donnelly was seeking to ingratiate himself with Mr McKevitt, and was using Mr Rupert's fundraising contacts in the US as "a trump card" to do so. The agent said he eventually met Mr McKevitt at the Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan and "clicked" with him straight away. "I liked Mr McKevitt, he seemed pretty personable," Mr Rupert said. "I felt the feeling was mutual."

Mr Rupert said Mr McKevitt told him of a "coming together" of various dissident republican groups under the new banner of Óglaigh na hÉireann in June 1999. This new group comprised all of the "Real IRA", "98 per cent" of the Continuity IRA and a number of INLA and Provisional IRA members. They were engaged in training and were "getting ready" for a campaign.

"They had licked their wounds and, he felt, gotten over Omagh," Mr Rupert said.

Mr Rupert said he was told this group had a five-member Army Council, an Army executive and a shadow Army Council in case of arrests. Mr McKevitt's wife, Ms Bernadette Sands McKevitt was named as one of the Army Council.

"I took it to be that he was the man in charge." However, Mr McKevitt was at pains to point out that he was not on the Army Council of Óglaigh na hÉireann "for the specific purpose that he didn't want it to be known as his army."

They also discussed the contract for a number of rocket-propelled grenades the group had in the Baltics, a sleeper in Massachussets and Mr McKevitt's role in a number of IRA arms deals with Libya's Colonel Ghaddafi in the 1980s.

Mr Rupert said Mr McKevitt asked him to approach Mr Joe O'Neill, his contact in RSF, about convincing the group to become the political wing of Óglaigh na hÉireann. He approached Mr O'Neill, but was told "over my dead body", the court was told.

Mr Rupert said he was also asked by Mr McKevitt to redirect US funds intended for the Continuity IRA to the new paramilitary group, but again failed to do so.

Today is the fourth day of the trial of Mr McKevitt (53), Beech Park, Blackrock, Co Louth, who has pleaded not guilty to two charges of membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Óglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA, between August 29th, 1999 and March 28th, 2001; and to directing the activities of the same organisation between March 29th, 1999 and October 23rd, 2000.

The trial continues tomorrow.