Real Irish Republican Army

The Real Irish Republican Army is a splinter group of the Irish Republican Army (IRA); it was responsible for the 1998 Omagh Bombing in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Although the majority of the combatants in the conflict in Northern Ireland have accepted the terms of the peace laid out in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the Real IRA has continued its attacks.

Beginning in 1969, the IRA carried out various terrorist attacks and assassinations, attempting to compel the British Army to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The IRA also wanted 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 Irish Republican Army'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, Sinn Féin, to join the proposed public peace negotiations. The Army Council debated fiercely about the proposed cease-fire, because of British government expectations that the IRA would decommission, or disarm, as a precondition of joining the peace talks. A majority of the leadership voted to call the cease-fire, but a small group of dissenters, led by Michael McKevitt, walked out.

McKevitt and the others considered decommissioning to be a betrayal of the IRA's goals that would lead to the defeat of its ideal of a united Ireland. (The IRA considered 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 thus suggest that its existence as a standing army of a sovereign state was not legitimate.) McKevitt and his colleagues established a political party, The 32-County Sovereignty Committee, led by Bernadette Sands-McKevitt (the 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, but the police response to this warning was tragic. Whether the warning [Page 499]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, where the bomb had been planted. The explosion killed 29 and injured over 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.

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