The cause of this hostility is the widespread belief–though there has been no hard proof–that her husband is the man who ordered the Omagh bombing. News reports in Britain and Ireland have repeatedly identified Mickey McKevitt as an IRA veteran who served the underground army as a bomb expert and weapons master, and as the leader of a splinter group called the Real IRA, which took responsibility for the blast. McKevitt reportedly denied involvement in the bombing to a local parish priest, Father Desmond Campbell–and then vanished. Bernadette Sands-McKevitt has also denied involvement and said she could not “condone” the bombing. Last week she and Mickey McKevitt instructed their lawyers to start legal proceedings against various media organizations they say published defamatory statements about them. Still, many in the town are outraged–and ready to show it. The McKevitts’ print shop, located in a Dundalk mall, was shut down last week when the landlord changed the locks, and Sands-McKevitt was reportedly escorted from the building by security guards. Then came news that the U.S. Embassy in Dublin had denied her application for a visa because of what an embassy official termed her “terrorist activities.”
Her difficulties are a symptom of the almost universal revulsion at the massacre. The killings, only 50 miles from Dundalk, prompted a peace vigil not far from the McKevitts’ home–and had wider political repercussions as well. British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern had agreed the Real IRA would “be dealt with and taken off the streets.” In Dublin, a government spokesman promised an “extremely draconian” package of laws aimed at terrorists. Buckingham Palace announced that the queen would attend a still-to-be-scheduled memorial service for the victims of the attack at Omagh.
Not widely known before the bombing, the Real IRA is believed to be a small group of perhaps 30 IRA veterans and a number of new recruits. As the peace process gathered momentum, the militants broke with the mainstream IRA and Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm. In recent months the Real IRA staged bombings of several town centers in Northern Ireland. But the sheer horror and clumsiness of the Omagh operation appalled even sympathizers. The bombers apparently bungled vital telephone warnings. The ecumenical mix of the dead–Catholics and Protestants–was bound to bring everybody down on the Real IRA. For good measure, several were from the Irish Republic. Then there were the grisly details–particularly the fact that nine children and two babies had died. “Prior to this some people may have been wavering, but this is a turning point,” says Christine Larkin, a republican who works at a Dundalk bookstore. “There is no ambiguity anymore.”
The anti-Real IRA consensus extended to the major figures of Northern Irish politics. Among last week’s most telling images was the appearance of David Trimble, leader of the Protestant Unionists, attending the funeral in the Irish Republic of three young Catholic victims of the blast. Also at the ceremony: Trimble’s longtime adversary, the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.
Last week the Real IRA announced a “suspension” of its terror campaign–a gesture that seemed too little and too late. The Irish National Liberation Army, another diehard splinter group, also announced a ceasefire, which left only one identified underground group, the so-called Continuity IRA, still espousing violence. The larger meaning seemed to be that the carnage in Omagh had helped to unite old enemies, if only in grief, and may further undermine lingering popular support for terrorists. No one is predicting that the violence is over–but even realists hope that the worst atrocity in the history of Northern Ireland might just be among the last.
