𝗢𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗵 𝗕𝗼𝗺𝗯 𝗜𝗻𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝘆 Ulster Unionist Party Leader Jon Burrows MLA has called on anyone who confronted the men guarding the Omagh bomb car to come forward. He has also challenged Sinn Féin to say whether any of its members were among them. On Monday, journalist John Ware told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry what two confidential sources had told him. According to them, the stolen Vauxhall Cavalier was seen at the GAA club in Cullaville, South Armagh, on 13 August 1998, two days before the bombing. Mr Ware described a group of men as “Sinn Féin members, supporters, essentially republicans”. He said they suspected the car was for a bombing, challenged the two men with it and told them to “get the car away”. He said the car was then moved and loaded with the bomb. Jon Burrows said: “What John Ware has told the Inquiry is chilling. If his sources are right, a group of republicans looked at a stolen car in Cullaville on 13 August 1998, concluded it was going to be used for a bomb and confronted the men with it. Then they simply told them to take it somewhere else. “It is important to remember that at that time dissident republicans were carrying out a car bombing campaign across Northern Ireland. Just two weeks earlier, a 500lb car bomb had injured 35 people in Banbridge. “Two days later, 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, were murdered in Omagh in one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. The men in that car park would have known exactly what they had seen. Every Omagh family is entitled to know whether any of them picked up the phone to the RUC or the Gardaí before the bomb went off, or in the days afterwards. If they did not, why not? “Mr Ware described these men as Sinn Féin members and supporters. Sinn Féin has said it supports a full cross-border inquiry into Omagh, and it now has the chance to show it means that. The party’s leadership, north and south, should find out whether any of its members or representatives were present that day and say so publicly. It should also urge anyone who was there to give evidence to the Inquiry and to the police on both sides of the border. “As a former police officer, I know that the most valuable thing in any investigation is a witness who is prepared to come forward. Twenty-eight years on, it is not too late. “The Ulster Unionist Party supports this Inquiry and its work to get answers for everyone who lost a family member or friend in Omagh. Those answers have to include what was known on both sides of the border. The bomb car was stolen in the Republic, and the bomb crossed the border from the Republic. “On the same day it heard Mr Ware’s evidence, the Inquiry was told that a warning ending with the words ‘Omagh, Omagh, Omagh’ was telephoned to the Irish Defence Forces at Finner Camp the night before the bombing. “Last month the Irish government refused to let the Inquiry put almost any further questions directly to the senior Garda officer giving evidence about the theft of the bomb car. That fits a long pattern, from a 97 per cent refusal rate on extraditing terrorist suspects to requests from the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery that went unanswered. If Dublin is serious about legacy, it must make sure that every piece of information it holds about Omagh, including anything about what happened at Cullaville, reaches the Inquiry without delay and without redaction.”