Omagh Bomb Suspect Arrested
An Irish court on Wednesday charged Colm Murphy, 48, with conspiring to cause the explosion that killed 29 people last August in Northern Ireland's worst bomb attack.
Murphy was also charged with membership of an illegal armed group. The "Real Irish Republican Army", a fringe group, said it exploded the car bomb in Omagh. Murphy was the first person to be charged in connection with the investigation.
Murphy was ordered held without bail pending a trial on charges of belonging to the dissident Irish Republican Army group responsible for the attack, and for "conspiring to cause explosions" between Aug. 12 and Aug. 16.
A native of the Irish Republic border town of Dundalk, Murphy was arrested Sunday at his home. Police in both parts of Ireland -- who until Wednesday had arrested more than 60 people but secured no charges -- were still holding six other suspects in interrogation centers on Wednesday.
The dissident group, which calls itself simply the IRA and has been dubbed the Real IRA by Irish media, has been observing a truce since the Omagh attack.
Its leaders oppose the decisions of IRA commanders to call an indefinite truce in July 1997 and of the IRA's allied Sinn Fein party to accept the Good Friday peace accord of April 1998.
That agreement included a blueprint for a new Protestant-Catholic government for Northern Ireland, a goal at odds with traditional IRA-Sinn Fein policy, which is to see the British-linked state overthrown, not reformed.
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