Parliament watchdog to decide whether to release 15-year-old secret transcript in Omagh car bombing enquiry
Parliament's rules watchdog has three-and-a-half months to decide whether to release a secret transcript, amid efforts to establish whether the 1998 bombing could have been prevented.
Listen to this article
The Omagh bombing is considered the worst atrocity of the Troubles. The 1998 car bombing in Omagh city centre killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.
It took place just months after the Good Friday peace agreement, shocking Ireland and motivating leaders on both sides of the border to accelerate the peace process.
Omagh Bombing Inquiry solicitor Tim Suter has asked for information about an allegation "that police investigators into previous attacks in Moira, Portadown, Banbridge and Lisburn did not have access to intelligence materials which may have reasonably enabled them to disrupt the activities of dissident republican terrorists" in the Co Tyrone town.
The allegation is thought to have been made during a private session of the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee almost 16 years ago, on November 11 2009.
Read more: Three arrested after man, 24, stabbed to death 'for his Rolex' near luxury Knightsbridge hotel
Read more: Corbyn-Sultana party could draw level with Labour, new polling suggests
Conservative MP Simon Hoare warned there was "no wriggle room" in Parliament's rules to hand over the information to the inquiry without MPs' say-so, because it previously went "unreported".
Commons committees can refrain from reporting evidence in certain circumstances, for example, if it contains information which is prejudicial to the public interest.
MPs tasked the Commons Privileges Committee with looking at the 2009 transcript.
This seven-member group has until October 30 to decide whether to report and publish the evidence, which was originally given to the House by former senior police officer Norman Baxter.
"It is very hard for the House to decide whether or not to release evidence it has not seen and cannot see before the decision is made," Mr Hoare warned.
"It is particularly difficult in this case, as that evidence may contain sensitive information."
The North Dorset MP added that the Privileges Committee "might simply decide to publish it".
But the agreed motion will give the committee power to make an alternative recommendation "on the desirability or otherwise of the release of the evidence to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry".
Privileges Committee chairman Alberto Costa, the Conservative MP for South Leicestershire, told MPs that his organisation "stands ready to deal with this matter".
The independent inquiry chaired by Lord Turnbull will consider whether the Omagh bombing "could reasonably have been prevented by UK state authorities".
No one was ever convicted for the 1998 attack, but Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt was found liable in a 2009 civil case, along with three other men - Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly.
Murphy and Daly were initially cleared of liability on appeal in 2011, but found liable for the attack in a civil retrial in 2013.
Colm Murphy had also been convicted of criminal involvement in the conspiracy, but was cleared in a retrial when it was discovered that Irish police had falsified interview notes.
Mr Hoare agreed with DUP MP for Strangford Jim Shannon, who was born in Omagh, after he told the Commons that "justice" should be at the "forefront of all right honourable and honourable members' minds during this process".