Why suing terrorists like the Real IRA is not the answer

On Monday, amid the furore over last week's elections and Gordon Brown's political future, the Belfast high court supported a civil lawsuit brought by 12 families of victims of the 1998 Omagh bombing against members of the Real IRA.

As a result of Judge Declan Morgan's landmark ruling, the Omagh families will be able to seek up to £1.2 million in damages against the four men deemed to have been responsible for the bomb that killed 29 people. Crucially, they will also be able to sue the Real IRA as an organisation.

The Omagh families have hailed the triumphant conclusion of their eight-year campaign as a 'semblance of justice' after successive criminal investigations failed to find and convict the perpetrators.

Lawsuits could scapegoat people without ever conclusively proving their guilt

But the ruling raises questions that are relevant not only to Northern Ireland's worst terrorist atrocity. Some commentators have suggested that such civil actions may empower the victims of future terrorist atrocities and provide a new weapon against terrorism around the world, making it possible to undermine terrorist organisations financially where the normal legal process has failed.

These arguments are overly optimistic. The determination of the Omagh families to bring those who killed their loved ones to justice is entirely understandable and admirable, but it is worth recalling that their civil action was forced upon them by major failures on the part of the security forces, both before and after the bombing.

Judge Morgan's ruling was made possible by the lower burden of proof required in such cases, but this lowered benchmark may well offer a poor substitute for justice, by scapegoating certain individuals, without ever conclusively proving their guilt.

This is not necessarily a desirable precedent - and there is another reason why civil actions are a dubious weapon in the anti-terrorist arsenal.

The Omagh lawsuit was strongly supported by then Prime Minister Tony Blair, George Bush and others. The same kind of support was crucial in last month's decision by a Chicago Federal court to support a $600m civil suit against several alleged US-based Hamas