The investigation into the Belfast bombing of the university was led by Inspector Conor Doherty of the Special Branch. His experienced team of 15 officers at the PSNI headquarters was working their way through witness interviews and forensic reports.
The Inspector introduced Sinead Morrissey, the chief forensic computer analyst, to the team.
“Sinead has been tracking chatter online prior to and just after the explosion. I’ll hand over to Sinead and let her explain her findings, Sinead…”
Sinead pointed to the charts on the large screen and began “We were able to run some pretty nifty software that crunches audio data for key word sorting, focusing on the obvious word combinations such as: bomb, university, History and the dates/times relevant to the investigation. By a process of elimination we whittled down suspicious communications to several hundred both local and international flagged conversations.”
“So far, so routine. Just your usual bunch of nutters and known arsonists. But on closer analysis of the dark web, comms prior to the explosion show an interesting peak. Unfortunately, being the dark web, the audio data was encrypted. and we are still trying to decrypt it.
MI6 has infiltrated a number of extremist groups and have shared some invaluable intell with us. Specifically, they have been able to identify one or two of the parties using the dark web just minutes before the bomb went off. An outfit calling itself Shock Attack 98 has links with terror groups in France, Germany and Eastern Europe. Their chatter indicates some prior knowledge of the bombing. A smaller group called Guernica had several operatives travelling across the UK and into the Republic at the time.”
odespinner 