Real IRA men get 30 years for planning 'another Omagh'

Three members of the Real IRA caught by secret agents while plotting an Omagh-style bombing were jailed yesterday for 30 years each.

The terrorists, who were trapped trying to buy arms in an undercover sting last year, were "at or near the heart" of the organisation that carried out the Omagh bombing, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

Sentencing Fintan Paul O'Farrell, 39, Declan John Rafferty, 42, and Michael Christopher McDonald, 44, all from Co Louth, Mr Justice Astill said: "Whatever justification you can find in your hearts and minds for killing and maiming, it's the duty of these courts to reflect the public revulsion for the suffering and grief you impose on the innocent."

All three pleaded guilty last Thursday to conspiracy to cause an explosion in the UK or Republic of Ireland and trying to obtain weapons and explosives.

As the sentences were handed down, the grim-faced defendants looked up and waved to friends and family in the public gallery.

They had been arrested last July following a six-month operation by MI5 that had caught them trying to obtain "state sponsorship" from Iraq.

Woolwich Crown Court heard how they presented a shopping list of guns, grenades, missiles and explosives to agents they believed to be from the Iraqi Government.

They also sought funding from Iraq for the renegade republican group at a series of meetings at secret locations in Eastern Europe in the first half of 2001. But the men they were dealing with were not Iraqi agents but MI5 spies who were tape-recording every word.

The three men were arrested in the spa town of Piest'any in Slovakia on 5 July last year. They were later extradited to Britain and had been due to stand trial but, at Woolwich Crown Court last Thursday, they changed their pleas.

Yesterday, their barristers urged the judge to take into account their pleas, which were "unprecedented" for Irish republicans facing trial on the mainland. The defence also argued the three were not necessarily central to the Real IRA's operations and that, in any case, it was "difficult if not impossible" in their small coastal village to avoid pressure to work for the Real IRA.

But rejecting their arguments, Mr Justice Astill said: "It might be that there were pressures upon you from the accident of where you lived and loyalty to those you know.

"However, each of you took a decision to assist in obtaining the means to kill and to maim. That decision was made in the wake of the horrific results of the bomb in Omagh."