Real Irish Republican Army

The Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA) is a splinter group of the Irish Republican Army (IRA); it is responsible for the 1998 Omagh bombing in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Since 1969, the IRA has carried out various terrorist attacks and assassinations, attempting to compel the British Army to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The IRA also wants to reunite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. In the summer of 1997, after several years of secret peace talks and two previous cease-fires, the IRA's governing body, the Army Council, met to discuss whether the IRA should again declare a cease-fire to enable delegates from its political arm, the Sinn Féin Party, to join proposed public peace negotiations. The Army Council debated fiercely about the proposed cease-fire, because of British government expectations that the IRA would decommission, that is, disarm, as a precondition of joining the peace talks. A majority of the leadership voted to call the cease-fire; a small group of dissenters, led by Micky McKevitt, walked out.

McKevitt and the others considered decommissioning to be a betrayal of the IRA's goals and believed it would lead to the defeat of its ideal of a united Ireland. (The IRA considers itself to be the lawful army of the Irish Republic as envisioned in the declaration of Easter 1916, which first proclaimed the Irish Republic. Decommissioning would suggest that its existence as a standing army of a sovereign state is not legitimate.) McKevitt and his colleagues established a political party: The 32-County Sovereignty Committee, led by Bernadette Sands-McKevitt (sister of Bobby Sands, an IRA terrorist and martyr), and an armed wing called the Real IRA, or sometimes the True IRA, reflecting their belief that their organization has not deviated from the original Republican ideal. The Real IRA is estimated to have between 30 and 50 members, almost all of whom are former IRA members with expertise and experience in the arts of war, including bomb making.

The Real IRA immediately began bombings and attacks on British soldiers and Northern Irish police officers; between the fall of 1997 and the summer of 1998, the Real IRA is believed to have been involved in eight bombings or attempted bombings. On August 15, 1998, Real IRA members left a 500-pound car bomb in the market square of Omagh, a town in Northern Ireland. A warning was phoned to the police 10 minutes before the bomb exploded. Police response to this warning was tragic—whether the warning was deliberately misleading or whether the police misunderstood it—the result was that the police cleared the area near the town's courthouse and directed people toward the market square and the bomb. The explosion killed 29 and injured more than 200—making it the deadliest single bombing in Northern Ireland's 30-year conflict. The bombing was condemned by the IRA; several days later, the Real IRA issued an apology, stating that the death of innocent civilians had not been its intent. In January 2002, Colm Murphy was convicted of conspiring to cause the explosion. McKevitt is being tried under new laws against terrorism on charges of belonging to an illegal organization and directing the activities of The Real IRA.

In September 1998, the Real IRA declared a cease-fire. Some sources believe that Real IRA members [Page 308]were involved in a bombing in London in March 2001; others attribute the attack to the Continuity IRA, saying that the Real IRA has suffered defections to that group.

A few months later, three Real IRA members, Fintan Paul O'Farrell, Declan John Rafferty, and Michael Christopher McDonald, were arrested for a bombing conspiracy that involved seeking funding from Iraq; the men were convicted in May 2002 and given 30-year sentences. In summer 2002, security experts in Britain warned that the Real IRA might be planning assassination attempts on prominent politicians in a new bid to sabotage the peace process.

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