Under the slogan “No going back” (“There is no turning back”), about a thousand protesters took to the streets of Omagh, in Northern Ireland, in response to the shooting at the hands of several masked men who seriously injured police officer John Caldwell, before the eyes of his own son and several children at the local sports complex.
Police have detained six suspects, between the ages of 22 and 71, accused of attempted murder. The center of the investigation is the New IRA, the group of republican dissidents that continues to carry out violent actions in Ulster, about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Peace Agreement.
“John was taking the kids to training, and it’s hard to imagine a more horrific time to try to kill someone,” said Ricky Lyons, president of the Beragh Swifts Club, which lost another of its members, Ronan Kerr, in 2011. in a car bomb in 2011.
“What happened affects us all, fathers, mothers, children, coaches,” lamented the physical trainer Celine Curran, who participated with dozens of children in the march. “Those who shot John Caldwell are in serious danger of lighting a fuse that would end up burning us all,” the secretary of the local union council, Anton McCabe, warned on his own.
The tragic incident has revived the specter of the car bombing on Omagh’s main street that killed 29 and injured 220 in August 1998, months after the peace agreement was signed. The city of 20,000 inhabitants has since been the scene of dozens of violent actions at the hands of groups of Republican dissidents.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
