Could It Happen Again?

When a bomb exploded in Omagh, a market town in the heart of Northern Ireland, five years ago this month, Michael McKevitt was puttering around in the garden of his home on the outskirts of Dundalk in the Irish Republic. Within minutes of the blast, he received a phone call informing him that a number of civilians had been killed. That was an understatement. Twenty-nine people died in the Omagh atrocity, the most deadly incident in more than 30 years of the Troubles.

This month McKevitt was convicted of directing the Real I.R.A., a republican splinter group, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The case was the first prosecution for directing terrorism, a new offense introduced after the Omagh bombing. By jailing McKevitt, Irish authorities finally caught up with the man who led the Omagh bombers. But those who made and delivered that bomb have never been charged for the crime, and with the peace process stalled, their associates may be looking for opportunities to strike again.

Omagh was a disaster not only for the families of the 29 people who died but also for the terrorist organization McKevitt led. He founded the dissident group after falling out with republican leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who favored the political dialogue necessary for the peace process. But Omagh caused such widespread revulsion that governments on both sides of the border cracked down on terrorism like never before.

McKevitt joined the Provisional I.R.A. in the early '70s, rising quickly through the ranks and becoming quartermaster, the man responsible for arms procurement. McKevitt's long-term relationship with Bernadette Sands — the sister of I.R.A. martyr Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike in 1981 — gave him a potency among I.R.A. volunteers that he might not otherwise have enjoyed, so when he split from the Provisional I.R.A. many followed.

McKevitt's conviction was based largely on evidence provided by David Rupert, an American who infiltrated the Real I.R.A. on behalf of the fbi and MI5. Rupert won McKevitt's trust, portraying himself as a computer expert who could help with cyberterrorism and bring in badly needed funds from the States. Rupert has made no secret of his motivations. He calls himself a "whore" when it comes to money, and he's received plenty for his services: $1.25 million during his time as a spy, and he's due some $2 million more for his testimony.

With Northern Ireland's peace process in deadlock and its government in limbo, dissident republicans are trying to fill the vacuum with violence. McKevitt was joined in prison by eight men accused of training at a camp run by the Continuity I.R.A., another dissident group, and Belfast is regularly brought to a halt by bomb scares. "The dissidents are always a threat," says one British security source, "but there is definitely a higher-level threat at the moment." Thanks to good intelligence, police on both sides of the border are regularly intercepting members of the I.R.A. factions as they set out on attacks. But they still worry about what would happen if the information breaks down. "Even if we stop 19 out of 20 attacks," says a police source in Northern Ireland, "the twentieth could be devastating."

That's exactly what happened five years ago in Omagh. Three months after voters across Ireland overwhelmingly endorsed the 1998 Good Friday peace settlement, dissidents slipped a massive car bomb past security forces. The bomb deepened the resolve to make the peace process work, but left lingering worries that the accord hadn't really delivered the hoped-for end to violence. "The further away you are from Omagh, the closer you are to another atrocity," says Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aidan was killed in the blast. "They don't need much money, they don't need many people. All they need is a skilled bomber and a load of fertilizer."

The families who lost loved ones in the Omagh bombing are now pursuing a civil case against McKevitt and four others whom they believe were responsible for the atrocity. The British government has agreed to use public money to fund that case. "We owe it to those who died to have our day in court," says Gallagher. "No one has yet been tried for the bombing of Omagh. The net is closing in on the bombers. Having come this far we cannot let them get away."