The police investigation into the murder of a County Armagh journalist last September is “very alive”, according to Northern Ireland’s security minister.

Sunday world journalist Martin O’Hagan, 51, was shot dead in Lurgan, County Armagh, as he walked home from his local pub on September 28 last year.

The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used in the past by both the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, said it carried out the killing.

The Security Minister Jane Kennedy made her comments about the murder investigation to a delegation from the National Union of Journalists at Stormont on Tuesday.

They said they had called the meeting because of growing concern that little progress had been made in the six months since the killing and that threats against journalists had increased.

According to information available to the NUJ, at least five other journalists are under threat of death.

Speaking after their meeting on Tuesday April 9, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said the union would be pressing for further action by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

“If action is not taken to ensure the security of individual journalists at risk and the wider general threat to journalists, there is a real danger of self-censorship undermining the media's critical role in keeping the public informed,” he said.

Mr O'Hagan worked in the Belfast office of the Dublin-based Sunday World, where he built a reputation covering paramilitary and drugs-related stories.

After he was killed the then chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said that police inquiries were concentrating on the LVF.

(AMcE)