Seamus McKenna, whose name emerged in civil action against the Real IRA after the Ireland atrocity, falls off a school roof
One of the suspected Real IRA bombers behind the 1998 Omagh atrocity is on a life support machine tonight after falling off a roof.
Seamus McKenna fell off a school roof in his native Dundalk within the last 24 hours, the Guardian has learned.
McKenna was named as allegedly one of the Real IRA team which transported the bomb into the County Tyrone town in August 1998. Twenty nine people, including the mother of unborn twins, were killed in the blast while hundreds more were badly injured.
McKenna's name emerged in a civil action against the Real IRA taken by some of the relatives of the 29 people who died in the massacre, which was the single biggest atrocity of the Troubles and took place just months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement peace deal.
It is understood McKenna is being kept alive in a hospital in the Irish Republic until donors can be found for his organs as he was on a donor programme.
In the aftermath of what even the Real IRA regarded as a disastrous own goal, Irish police sources said that McKenna drove back to Dundalk and got drunk in a local bar rather than attend a terrorist debriefing about the botched bomb that caused so many civilian casualties.
Two Irish republicans, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly, were earlier this year held responsible for the massacre following a civil retrial at the High Court in Belfast where a judge identified compelling evidence of their involvement in the bombing.
Murphy, a contractor and publican, and Daly, a former employee, were sued by some victims' relatives in a landmark legal action. Appeals by the two men are expected to be heard in November.
No one was ever prosecuted in the criminal courts for the bombing. In an earlier civil trial, Murphy, Daly and two others – Michael McKevitt and Liam Campbell – were held responsible and ordered to pay £1.6m in damages.
McKevitt, the Real IRA founder who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the Irish Republic for directing terrorism, and Campbell, who recently successfully fought extradition proceedings to Lithuania on arms smuggling charges, failed in their attempts to overturn the original ruling.