Evidence store a mess, trial told

Twenty-nine people died in the Omagh bombing

A police store where evidence was kept was a "complete mess" a scenes of crime officer has told the Omagh bomb trial.

The officer was responsible for gathering evidence at a mortar bomb attack on Newry police station less than a month before the Omagh bombing.

He accepted trying to find exhibits in the special property store was difficult and often items were not in the store register.

Sean Hoey, 37, from Jonesborough denies 58 charges over a series of attacks.

These include the murder of 29 people in the bomb attack in Omagh in August 1998.

He is also charged with five other bombings, four bomb conspiracies, and six murder conspiracies.

Witness evidence

The mortar attack on Newry police station happened less than a month before the Omagh bombing, and the prosecution is trying to establish connections between this and other attacks of which Sean Hoey is accused.

Under cross-examination, the scenes of crime officer accepted that often things he was looking for were not in the store register while locating items in the store room could be like "finding a needle in a haystack".

Meanwhile, the trial has heard for the first time witness evidence directly linked to the Omagh bombing.

The first witnesses included a woman who had taken her mother shopping in the town that day.

Ruth Buchanan described seeing a car which matched the description of the vehicle used in the attack parking in Market Street that afternoon.

She said two men got out and one of them smiled at her before walking away, about an hour before the bomb exploded.

The trial continues.