An attempt by two Irish republicans to overturn a landmark civil ruling that found them responsible for the Omagh bomb has been dismissed by the European court of human rights (ECHR).
The Strasbourg court declared the 2009 ruling by a Belfast court – which awarded £1.6m in damages to relatives of the 29 people who died in the single worst atrocity of Northern Ireland’s Troubles – should not be challenged.
Convicted Real IRA founder Michael McKevitt, who is currently imprisoned in Portlaoise in the Irish Republic, and Liam Campbell, who is detained in Maghaberry jail in Northern Ireland had argued that their civil trial in Belfast was unfair. Both were ordered to pay compensation.
The two men alleged the case against them was essentially a criminal prosecution and that they were not provided with the legal protections to which they were entitled. They also complained that hearsay evidence by an FBI agent, who had infiltrated dissident republican groups, should not have been admitted during the trial.
Though responsibility for the explosion on 15 August 1998 was claimed by the Real IRA, no one has been convicted of carrying out the attack.
Dismissing McKevitt and Campbell’s application, the Strasbourg court said: “In regard to the claim that the judge should have applied a criminal standard of proof, the [ECHR] found that this was not necessary because the proceedings had been for a civil claim for damages; there had been no criminal charge.
“In regard to the evidence of the absent FBI agent, the court found in particular that the judge had fully considered the need for appropriate safeguards given the witness’s absence; that the defendants had had an adequate opportunity to challenge the agent’s evidence with their own; and that the judge had had due regard to the appropriate considerations when deciding what weight he could attach to the evidence of an absent witness.”
In a separate ruling, the ECHR also dismissed a claim by Shabir Ahmed, who is in Wakefield prison after being convicted in 2012 of grooming young women for sexual purposes in Bolton. He is serving a 19-year sentence.
Ahmed alleged his trial was unfair because the jury disseminated information about their deliberations directly to far-right organisations hostile to the defendants, thereby demonstrating that the jury had been biased.
Turning down his claim, the Strasbourg court observed: “If it had been proven that a juror had passed confidential information on the jury deliberations to far-right organisations, this would suggest that the juror and the jury as a whole had lacked impartiality. However, there was simply no proof that that had happened. The impartiality of a jury must be presumed until there is proof to the contrary.”
Complaints of jury impartiality in the Liverpool crown court trial had previously been investigated by the UK’s criminal cases review commission and found to be without substance, the ECHR noted.
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