Call for UVF bomb case to be re-examined

Sinn Féin MLA Philip McGuigan

The only person to be charged in a loyalist "attempt at mass murder" walked free from court last week after a Belfast judge accepted his claim that he did not know that the car he was driving contained a bomb.

During a series of PSNI interviews, 32-year-old Raymond McMaster, from Belmont Place, Coleraine, admitted that he had been the driver of a Ford Sierra, later discovered to contain a massive car bomb at the world famous Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, North Antrim. The Fair regularly attracts thousands of people to the County Antrim coast.

McMaster said that he had driven the car to Ballycastle from a layby in nearby Armoy as a favour to a man he had met in a Bushmill's pub, but he later withdrew that statement, claiming he had been "set up" by unionist paramilitaries.

According to a forensics expert who testified at the trial, the bomb — which was planted at the annual Fair in Ballycastle in August 2001 — would have caused a "massive fireball and anyone close to it would get very seriously injured, if not killed".

During the two-week trial it was revealed by a forensic expert that the device was only prevented from detonating by a sliver of black paint, which jammed the timer unit.

In his summing up on Friday 19 March, Belfast Court Judge Weatherup said that although McMaster had lied about driving the car to the town, he was clearing him of intending to cause an explosion because he was "not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt" that McMaster had any prior knowledge that an explosive device was in the vehicle at the time.

Reacting to the acquittal, Sinn Féin's North Antrim Assembly member Philip McGuigan called for an inquiry into the judgement.

"McMaster lied about driving this car which contained the bomb," he said. "Yet in acquitting him, the judge readily accepted his (McMaster's) word when he said he knew nothing of the bomb's presence in the vehicle. I find this totally unbelievable."