Murdered Man 'Was MI5 Agent' Say Killers

As was initially suspected, dissident republican terrorists were behind the brutal murder of a man they claim was an informer for the Security Service (MI5).

The Real IRA said it murdered a man who was found shot dead, stripped and bound in Londonderry on Wednesday.

The illegal organisation said it had killed Kieran Doherty, 31, a former republican prisoner from the Brandywell area whose bound and stripped body was found on Braehead Road, near the Irish border.

In November 2009 Mr Doherty gave an interview to the Derry Journal newspaper in which he claimed he had been approached by the security service MI5 while trying to set up a cigarette manufacturing company.

According to the paper, he was repeatedly turned down for a licence by Revenue and Customs and had then been approached by an MI5 agent

"I think the whole thing is a set up in order to try and recruit informers," he told the newspaper.

MI5 - which has a large base at Palace Barracks, Holywood - is responsible for protecting the United Kingdom against threats to national security.

It is understood that Mr Doherty was previously in prison for the armed robbery of a nightclub in Donegal in 2001.

In January this year, Mr Doherty again contacted the same newspaper after the police searched his home and found €500,000 worth of cannabis plants was found in a house at Carrigans in Co Donegal.

Mr Doherty told the newspaper that he had no involvement with the drugs and that the house belonged to a Real IRA prisoner, Seamus McGreevy, whom he had met in Portlaoise prison.

Meanwhile, the local MP and Stormont Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said the murder was a "dirty deed" and urged co-operation with the police.

He added that the political movement linked to the Real IRA, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, should make a statement.

(BmCC/GK)