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The Reunion

Factual: Life Stories

Series which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history

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The Reunion: The Omagh Bombing

04/05/2014

The Omagh Bombing

BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, The Omagh Bombing

Sue MacGregor reunites five people whose lives were changed by the Omagh bomb.

A car bomb, planted by dissident Irish Republican terrorists, killed 29 people in the town of Omagh in 1998. Sue MacGregor meets five people whose lives were changed as a result.

The Omagh bomb was the worst massacre in Northern Ireland's modern history. On Saturday the 15th of August a massive bomb placed by the so-called Real IRA killed two unborn twins, six men, twelve women and eleven children. The dead included Protestants, Catholics and a Mormon. The blast wave was so powerful that the bodies of several victims were never found.

The bombing was "a barbaric act intended to wreck Ireland's aspirations for peace and reconciliation," said President Clinton who came to walk amongst the wreckage. Only four months earlier Northern Ireland's main political parties had signed up to the Good Friday agreement, power sharing was on its way and the Provisional IRA was on ceasefire.

No one has ever been convicted in connection with the massacre at Omagh but in April 2014, Seamus Daly was arrested and charged with 29 counts of murder over the attack.

The 43-year-old bricklayer, originally from Culloville, County Monaghan, but now residing in Jonesborough, County Armagh, also faces counts of causing the explosion in Omagh and possession of a bomb in the County Tyrone market town with intent to endanger life or property.

In this episode of The Reunion, recorded shortly before charges were brought against Daly, Sue MacGregor is joined by Kevin Skelton whose wife Mena was killed by the bomb, Michael Gallagher and Victor Barker whose sons Aiden and James also died, former RUC police constable Richard Scott, and by BBC Northern Ireland's Political Editor Mark Devenport.

Producer: Emily Williams
Series Producer: David Prest

THE REUNION is a Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 4.

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