" Survivor still has flashbacks to awful day "

At 29 minutes past five on January 17, 1992, Robert O'Neill was chatting to his mates as they made their way home from work at the end of an ordinary day.

It was a Friday, they had cashed their pay cheques that afternoon, and he had just asked them where they were going that night.

The truth was that they were going nowhere, for at 31 minutes past, they lay dead or dying around him, and there would be no more ordinary days.

The events of that night scarred Robert O'Neill so much that he never worked again and, for 10 years afterwards, he vowed not to speak about the atrocity, to spare the mother of a close friend who perished alongside him.

Today, it is obvious that he still bears the mental as well as the physical wounds from one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.

"I still get flashbacks to that day. We were coming up a bit of a hill. There was a bus just ahead of us, and as the road levelled off we were driving at about 40," he said.

"The next thing I knew there was a flash, and a bang, and I felt as if I was flying through the air. The force of the bomb tore through one side of the van and killed the whole row of men who were sitting there. I can remember it as if it was just now.

"The force of the explosion lifted the van right into the air, and there was a crash as we fell back down again.

"I ended up being blown out of the van with the force of the blast. Some people were still inside, and others were lying in the field or the ditches.

"Everything was chaos. Both my ears were perforated, and blood was pouring from my eyes, but I could hear screaming and men crying out from the back of the van.

"I tried to walk, but I couldn't. As far as I could get was the grass at the roadside, and that was only after pulling a piece of of twisted steel from my left leg."

Mr O'Neill, who lost part of his index finger in the bomb, still bears extensive scars to both legs, and requires medication to ease constant back pain and help him sleep.

Far him, though, the real agony is his certainty that the atrocity could have been prevented: "At the inquest, the coroner was told that because of a string of security lapses, the minibus was a sitting duck. An RUC inspector confirmed no police cover had been given to the vehicle."

Mr O'Neill claims he started asking questions about security before the bomb after a gut feeling that the security forces were not aware of their movements.

He also claims that, on January 7, he and a fellow worker went to the police station in Omagh to inquire about their security arrangements.

"Look, here's my diary for the day," he said, handing it over.

There, between the entries saying "7.30 to 4.40" and "Car paid" was "Sgt Hughes, Omagh Police Stn."

"The sergeant in Omagh said he had no information from Karl Construction about us. We checked with Castlederg UDR camp, where we were picking up some rubble, and the position was the same.

"The sergeant asked us how long we had been using the Cookstown to Omagh Road, and when we told him the other workers had been using it for maybe 11 or 12 months, he said: "That's madness'. He said the road was too dangerous for that, and even the police didn't use it. He said if we continued to travel that route we would get hit.

"That policeman did not tell us what he was going to do about our security. Later, after the bomb, the same policeman said he could not recollect our conversation. The whole thing is a cover-up from start to finish."

Mr O'Neill said, if action had been taken on January 7, the massacre might not have happened.

"The police could have directed the vans to take different routes each day and provided us with protection.

"We were obviously worried about security, especially because we had to follow the same route to pick up and drop off people, and we were using the same van, so on January 11, we asked if we could use the spare van, and were told we couldn't. So all that week we paid one of the lorry drivers £5 a day to take us in his car, then he had to go to RAF Aldergrove on the Friday, and we were back in the van."

According to the book Lost Lives, there was controversy at the time of the inquest when it emerged that no police protection had been provided for the workers' van.

One officer told the inquest: "I was not aware of receiving messages regarding the movements of workers from Lisanelly by Karl. It is a sit­uation that should not have been allowed to develop." If he had known, he told a solicitor, protection would have been given throughout the route. Asked by the solicitor if the van had been a sitting duck, he said: "There was no coverage given to that vehicle."

Cedric Blackbourne, the owner of Karl Construction, however, said his firm had followed all procedures laid down by the RUC to the letter of the law.

He said a detailed description of the van had been provided to the police and they were aware that his workers at Lisanelly were travelling to and from Magherafelt every day.

At the inquest, the company produced a fax dated January 16 listing the van's movements for the following day.

However, the fact remains beyond dispute that on the day of the massacre, no police protection was pres­ent, and eight men died: a thorn that has worried at Robert O'Neill to this day.

"I still have nightmares about it, especially coming up to this time of year. All I want is for the truth to be told, and justice for the eight men who died. That's all I want," he said.

He put down the thick sheaf of files, statements and press clippings he has kept since the atrocity, and looked out of the window of the bun­galow he shares with his wife Maureen.

"That's all I want," he said again. "Just the truth." News Letter 17 th January 2007