“Martin the police did not plant the bomb your former associates did..”

In the Sunday Independent, Alan Murray quotes Victor Barker, whose son was killed in the Omagh bombing in 1998, on a text conversation he had with Northern Ireland deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, on the day of the council’s official ceremony. From the report

Victor Barker said he first met Martin McGuinness in a hotel in Buncrana shortly after his 12 year-old son was murdered in 1998. “He wanted to come round to the house to pay his respects but I didn’t want that and we met in the hotel. Since then we have communicated intermittently over the years and I did meet him with Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly but that meeting was not a terribly good one.

“Nothing came of it and I was very disappointed by the response from Adams in particular. On Friday I decided to send a text to Martin McGuinness to again ask him to give that vital assistance and urge his fellow republicans to give the information that would convict the bombers but again he wouldn’t agree to that. But when Sinn Fein does take that step it will show that they are genuinely into peace and a system of justice which should protect everybody, Catholic and Protestant,” he said.

And, on the day of the un-official ceremony, he also quotes the chairman of the Omagh Self Help and Support Group, Michael Gallagher

Mr Gallagher said: “Sinn Fein has done nothing to help bring the bombers to justice and to see their mayor opening the memorial garden was too much for me to take.”