What happened in Belfast this week will reverberate around the world.

You’d only to watch Michael Gallagher to see that. In the aftermath of the historic civil court judgement that ruled four Real IRA terrorists — Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly — were behind the Omagh bombing, this quietly spoken, fiercely determined campaigner gave interview after interview to media from across the globe.

At one point someone put an arm around Michael: “The 9/11 families in New York have sent a message of congratulations.”

Someone else called: “Can you do another telephone interview Michael?” “Who is it?” Michael mouthed. “Al Jazeera.”

The man was weary, but in the 10 years that I’ve known him it was the first time I can say I saw Michael Gallagher truly smile. Smile not just with his lips but in a way that lit up his eyes and his whole being. For once that terrible pain that you always saw in Michael’s face was — temporarily at least — gone. It was the same for Stanley McCombe. For all the families. Michael’s 21-year-old son Aiden was murdered in the Omagh atrocity. Stanley lost his wife Ann. Victor Barker lost his 12-year-old son James. Godfrey Wilson’s daughter Lorraine (15) was murdered.

Those were just a few of the victims of Omagh. Statistics can’t convey the enormity of the pain their families have endured since. Even those photo collages we’ve seen in the papers of the 29 people who were murdered only hint at the scale of the heartache.

All those bright, innocent faces, so many of them so very young. And so very, very different from the evil bastards who took their lives. It was lawyer Victor Barker who originally came up with the idea of taking the civil action. Denied justice in the criminal courts, he and Michael and Stanley and Godfrey and a number of other families were determined to make the guilty pay. But it was to be an eight year long battle against the terrorists, bureaucracy, cynicism and endless official stonewalling.

Raising the money to fund the legal action was the first major hurdle cleared only when Lord Peter Mandelson stepped in to urge the government to help. The families’ brilliant legal team from the law firm H2O led by the fearless Jason McCue and the magnificent Lord Dan Brennan were warned time and time again by legal ‘experts’ that they would fail.

But they didn’t fail.

“In law,” Lord Brennan told me after the case, “winning, well, that’s just life. Winning something you truly care about — there is no feeling like it.“

His commitment and that of the Belfast lawyer who stood with them over that long eight years has not only given some degree of justice to those whose lives were ripped apart by Omagh. It has also more importantly paved the way for victims all over the world to hit the terrorists responsible in a way that will hurt them. All those so-called brigadiers and officers commanding, those public figures known to have been at the very heart of terror groups — they now face the possibility of having to face a court, to face up to their crimes and to literally face paying for them.

“What has been so glorious about this action,” says Jason McCue, “is that it’s been about people — not the state or the authorities — but ordinary people taking on the terrorists and winning.”

And all over the world ordinary people from Tel Aviv to Mumbai, from New York to Bali are taking note now of how it was done. The families of the July 7 bombing victims in London are already expressing an interest in taking a similar case. Here in Northern Ireland, however, attention turns to another action being taken by the same H2O team — to attempt to secure compensation from the Libyan regime of Colonel Gadaffi who supplied the IRA with Semtex. That case could affect as many as 6,000 families in Northern Ireland.

‘Experts’ have sneered and said it has no chance of success. They said that about the Omagh civil action, too ?