The Special Criminal Court is expected to give its verdict on Friday in the trial of Mr Colm Murphy, the only man charged in connection with the Omagh bomb.
Mr Murphy's counsel, Mr Michael O'Higgins SC, concluded his closing submissions yesterday after a 25-day trial.
At the conclusion of the submissions Mr Justice Barr, presiding at the court of three judges sitting without a jury, said the court would "hopefully" be in a position to give its verdict on Friday.
The defendant was remanded on continuing bail of €126,973 until Friday. Mr Murphy (49), a building contractor and publican who is a native of Co Armagh, with an address at Jordan's Corner, Ravensdale, Co Louth, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring in Dundalk with another person not before the court to cause an explosion in the State or elsewhere between August 13th and 16th, 1998.
The prosecution is alleging that Mr Murphy lent his mobile phone and another he obtained from Mr Terence Morgan to the people who planted the Omagh bomb. Mr Morgan gave evidence last November that he had lent his mobile phone to Mr Murphy, but last Friday he retracted that evidence and said he had not and had been put under pressure to give evidence.
Mr O'Higgins submitted that the court could not rely on the evidence of Mr Morgan, who was "a suggestible person". He had made a specific allegation against a named garda that pressure had been brought to bear on him to come to Dublin to give evidence, and this allegation had not been contradicted by the prosecution.
The court has already ruled that two gardaí were guilty of "patent falsification" of interviews, which cannot be admitted in evidence, but that others, including one where Mr Murphy allegedly admitted lending his phone to dissident republicans and knowing it was for moving a bomb to Northern Ireland, can.