System failed to record every vehicle - Omagh Inquiry

Colonel Peter MacMullen told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry that there is evidence from August 1998 that it was known that the British army's vehicle monitoring system was failing to record every vehicle crossing the border at Aughnacloy in Co Tyrone.

Twenty-nine people were killed, including the mother of unborn twins, when the Real IRA detonated a car bomb in Omagh on 15 August 1998.

Earlier, data analyst Mark Safranuaskaus told the Inquiry the car used in the bombing was not captured in footage from the border crossing and that the recording had been paused for eight and a half minutes within a 35-minute window when it's estimated the car crossed into Northern Ireland.

However, the Inquiry also heard that the "bomb car" may have taken a route to avoid the camera checkpoint.

"So what we need to do is to understand whether there is any significance to be attached to the fact that vehicle, the bomb car, cannot be seen in the recording between 1pm and 2pm," Counsel for the Inquiry Paul Greaney KC said.

He said it "might be significant if the system would be expected to record every vehicle that passed the cameras", but he said it was "far from a perfect system".

He gave examples of where vehicles passed the cameras "in close succession, they were not always captured", and how "the footage pauses from time to time, usually on a particular vehicle", but that during these periods other cars that pass the cameras were not being recorded.

Colonel MacMullen, who is the Assistant Head of Operational Legacy for the British Army, described it as a "failing" that was in the system, and he said that "it was an anomaly that had been raised in the system".

When asked to elaborate on this, Colonel MacMullen said: "We have a document enclosed that dates a specific point in around, I think, 12 August of that time where it was raised, so it was clearly an issue that was live at that period of time."

Colonel MacMullen said that he could not "definitively" say exactly how the Aughnacloy checkpoint was run in August 1998, but that there was "paperwork" that indicated that automatic number plate recognition or ANPR cameras "was due to be rolled out at that time".

Checkpoint 'unmanned' since ceasefire

He said that he believed the checkpoint had been "unmanned" since the ceasefire in 1995.

He was also asked about whether the system was fully automated or whether people were involved in their operation.

Colonel MacMullen said it was his "assumption" that it would have been an automated system by 1998 "because it was utilising ANPR."

When asked about possible "human system intervention", he said it would have had to have been done locally in Aughnacloy and by "private soldiers, lance corporals, corporals", but he said he thought this was "very unlikely".

Paul Greaney KC asked him about footage from the Aughnacloy checkpoint and how "sometimes it zooms in, sometimes it zooms out, sometimes it pauses on a particular vehicle" and whether these suggested "human intervention".

Colonel MacMullen said the camera could equally be "zooming in or out automatically" and he said he knew that the early ANPR system "struggled in a whole series of different light and weather conditions".

"So I can see both sides of this one, I haven't found anything definitive either way," Colonel MacMullen said.

Colonel MacMullen confirmed to the inquiry that there was "no missing footage for the relevant South to North cameras for that period that I've identified, 1pm to 2pm on the 15 August (1998)" and "there is no indication from the records of the Ministry of Defence of any deliberate human interference with the recording that we know was being made on the 15th of August (1998)".

He also said that there was "no paperwork" to identify "any specific working arrangements between the MOD (Ministry of Defence) and British Army, on the one hand, and the RUC on the other, in relation to the vehicle monitoring system at Aughnacloy".

"It just, the documentation doesn't exist, just practices seem to happen naturally in that space, I either imagine there was documentation or there was no requirement for it because it just happened," Colonel MacMullen said.

Colonel MacMullen also confirmed that "the Ministry of Defence is unable to confirm... whether any state agency of the Republic of Ireland had any cameras covering the area of Athnacloy border crossing which had been avowed to the UK state."

British army recording supplied by the PSNI

The British army recording of the Aughnacloy border, that was shown to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry today was supplied by the PSNI as it formed part of the initial RUC investigation.

Colonel MacMullen confirmed that the British Army no longer had copies of these recordings.

Colonel MacMullen said that data from ANPR cameras was recorded in a database called "VENGEFUL" before they were overwritten.

However, Colonel MacMullen said that the British Army no longer had "a record of the database" adding that "there seems to be no reason why that information disappeared".

Colonel MacMullen confirmed to the inquiry that after six months data would be transferred from the live VENGEFUL database to "DAT tape" for archival storage.

The inquiry heard that "the DAT tape was the sole archived copy, and there was no separate back-up of the archived tape."

Hugh Southey KC, representing a group of survivors and bereaved families, asked Colonel MacMullen if he was correct in understanding that "the DAT tapes don't exist anymore".

Colonel MacMullen responded, saying: "We have not been able to find anything along those lines that we hold."

The Inquiry also heard that during an upgrade of the VENGEFUL system, "whilst data was transferred between the VENGEFUL current and VENGEFUL replacement system, a discrepancy was identified in the data held between the two systems".

Colonel MacMullen said: "in August 98, that information was identified and there was a problem and they were trying to identify how they would resolve it."

"It's a very short letter which turns around and says, 'there's a problem' and 'we've identified this as a problem,' it gives us nothing in terms of a resolution or anything in addition to that, that we've been able to find," Colonel MacMullen said.