Funeral of murdered investigative journalist take place

The funeral of the murdered investigative journalist Martin O’Hagan has taken place in Lurgan.

Thousands of mourners attended the funeral of Mr O’Hagan on Monday. The 51-year-old father of three was shot dead near his house in Westfield Garden, Lurgan as he walked home from a local pub with his wife Marie on Friday evening.

The shooting has been claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used in the past for the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

Mr O’Hagan, who worked in the Northern office of the Dublin-based Sunday World newspaper, had been threatened previously over his work on paramilitary and drugs-related stories.

The Sunday World has a distinctive agenda for hard-hitting investigative stories on crime and the paper’s Northern Editor Jim McDowell vowed that the murder of Mr O’Hagan would not change that agenda. Mr McDowell said the attack had not been preceded by any renewed death threats.

Kidnapped by the IRA in 1989 amid allegations of being an informer, Mr O’Hagan was later released. He had also been forced to leave Northern Ireland for a time following a series of death threats. They followed articles printed in 1992 on loyalist paramilitaries, in which Mr O’Hagan coined the term “King Rat” for loyalist paramilitary Billy Wright.

The newspaper’s Belfast office was firebombed in 1999.

A staunch supporter of trade unions Mr O’Hagan was the secretary of the Belfast branch of the National Union of Journalists.

RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan said that while the murder investigation was at a very early stage, they were pursuing a firm line of enquiry that local elements of the LVF were responsible.

Mr O'Hagan's murder has been widely condemned by leading politicians on both sides of the border as an attack on democracy and the right to freedom of speech. (SP)