Seamus Daly, the only remaining suspect in Northern Ireland's 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people and threatened a peace deal, walked free from prison Tuesday after a British court dropped all charges.
Daly had been in Maghaberry high-security prison near Belfast for nearly two years awaiting trial after being charged over the atrocity committed by the Real IRA militant republicans a splinter group of the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army).
The case against Daly, a 45-year-old bricklayer, collapsed as prosecutors withdrew all charges after inconsistent evidence by a key witness in preliminary pre-trial hearings.
The car bombing, which also injured around 220 people, was the single worst atrocity of the sectarian conflict known as The Troubles in which around 3,500 people were killed over three decades.
No-one has ever been convicted in a criminal court over the bombing, which tore through the market town of Omagh, testing the peace accords signed only months earlier to put an end to the conflict.
In 2009, the Belfast High Court found that Daly and three other men were liable in a civil case brought by families of the victims and they were later ordered to pay more than £1.6 million (2.1 million euros, $2.2 million) in damages to the relatives.
In civil cases, guilt can be proven on the "balance of probabilities" rather than criminal law's requirement of "beyond reasonable doubt".
Daly has always denied involvement in the bombing.
"It's very painful but on the evidence we've heard, I wouldn't want anyone to be convicted," Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden was one of those killed in the bombing, told the BBC after Tuesday's decision.
"I feel that there has been a chance wasted here. There never was a political will to find the people responsible," he said.
