Policeman injured and publicly named

Dissident Republicans attacked a police officer near Castlederg in Co Tyrone. They placed a bomb under his car which exploded wounding the officer in the leg. There was some controversy when the officer was named in the House of Commons – as throughout the Troubles there was a convention of not naming injured members of the security forces. It appears that the politicians were merely following the lead set by the newspapers in West Tyrone. The newspapers decided to name the officer, who hails from Omagh, as a deliberate rebuke to his attackers and to assert that the officer had the support of all sides of the community in West Tyrone.