Pressure grows for Omagh inquiry

The 1998 car bombing was the worst single atrocity of the Troubles, killing 29 people including unborn twins, but it is now claimed intelligence officials were recording the bombers' mobile phone calls as they carried out the attack.

Bereaved relatives said their long-standing demands for a public inquiry must now be answered after a new documentary claimed the phone-tap information was never passed to detectives probing the bombing which was carried out by the anti-peace process Real IRA.

The Government is also being challenged to reveal if it knew the bombers' phones were tapped, after the details of a Home Office meeting reportedly showed senior officials discussing how the failure to use information from a telephone intercept led to an unspecified terrorist act.

The Omagh investigation has been dogged by controversy, with security forces already accused of mishandling the case.

The bombers have never been brought to justice, and Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden died in the blast, said the case for a public inquiry was now overwhelming. "We have been demanding a public inquiry since 2002 into the abysmal failure of the police inquiries," he said. "In all conscience the Government can no longer resist this."

The new allegations are contained in a BBC Panorama documentary.

It is unclear if the intelligence officials were listening to the bombers' calls as they made them, or if the calls were recorded, but it is claimed that the full details of the intercepts were not passed to officers investigating the mass murder.

"Panorama has established that Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) was recording mobile phone conversations between some of the bombers as they drove from the Irish Republic to the market town of Omagh," said the programme-makers. "The revelation that the intelligence services were listening to bombers - both on the day of the bombing and in the weeks leading up to it - raises new questions about whether the single worst atrocity of the troubles could have been prevented."

Last December Sean Hoey, 38, a south Armagh electrician was cleared of charges related to the bombing and a series of other attacks. Since then a civil case launched by some of the families against five men they believe were involved in the bombing has got under way, though the accused deny the allegations levelled against them.