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Twenty years on and no justice over killing


There needs to be an inquiry into Martin O’Hagan’s murder, says Séamus Dooley


A


t a simple May Day ceremony in Transport House, Belfast, in 2002, Marie O’Hagan unveiled a plaque in honour of


her murdered husband Martin. Marie and Martin’s daughters,


Martina, Cara and Niamh, later walked with NUJ colleagues led by John Barsby, president, and Mary Maher, cathaoirleach, of the Irish executive council, in the annual May Day parade through the heart of Belfast. Of the many events marking Martin


O’Hagan’s brutal killing at the hands of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) on September 28 2001, that May Day gathering was perhaps the most fitting. O’Hagan loved the Belfast May Day


celebration; Kevin Cooper’s picture vividly captures his pride in carrying the NUJ banner every year. At that May Day rally in St George’s


Market, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions condemned the murder of O’Hagan and the sectarian killing in the same year of Catholic postal worker Daniel McColgan, who was also shot dead by loyalists.


24 | theJournalist


Martin O’Hagan. Daniel McColgan. Messengers. Workers. Victims. O’Hagan would have been the first to


warn against a hierarchy of victims and the NUJ believes the families of all killed in the Troubles and their aftermath are entitled to seek answers where there has been a failure to secure prosecutions. O’Hagan was an investigative reporter for the Sunday World and secretary of the Belfast and district branch of the NUJ. A former member of the Official IRA, O’Hagan had served time in jail as a young man before committing himself to journalism. He was a believer in radical left-wing politics and felt journalism was the most effective means to influence change. He was fearless and tenacious in exposing corruption by gangsters and paramilitaries. During his career, he was targeted by paramilitaries on all sides of the political divide, including being kidnapped by the Provisional IRA. Violent Belfast loyalist Billy Wright, whom he nicknamed ‘King Rat’, was especially incensed by his journalism.


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Nothing has transpired to dissuade those of us who believe the failure to secure prosecutions may be rooted in fear of exposing collusion


In 1992, Wright, then a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), had attempted to have O’Hagan killed. Later, Wright’s splinter group, the LVF, attacked the Sunday World’s Belfast office. Four years later, O’Hagan was gunned down near his Lurgan home in the presence of his wife. The Red Hand Defenders, an operational codename for the LVF, claimed responsibility. In marking the 20th anniversary of his callous murder, we should remember all those killed and injured in Northern Ireland. While celebrating O’Hagan’s journalistic legacy, we must be mindful of the grief of his family, for whom anniversaries and events are a painful reminder of their great loss. In 2013 the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland reviewed the file on eight suspects arrested by the police and concluded there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman has also dismissed the possibility of investigating police failures in the case. Since 2017, the NUJ has been calling for an independent, external investigation into his murder, and has asked the British and Irish governments to appoint international experts to do this. The uncomfortable truths will not be exposed without an external inquiry into every aspect of O’Hagan’s death, including the quality of evidence gathering and any links between Loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces. The failure to bring those responsible for the murder of O’Hagan to justice is a stain on the history of policing in Northern Ireland. After his death, his colleague Jim


Campbell, former northern editor at the Sunday World, warned that those responsible would not be brought to justice because members of the LVF gang involved were “paid police informers”. Campbell, who was seriously


wounded in a UVF gun attack in 1984, also said police knew the names of O’Hagan’s murderers within hours of the drive-by shooting. Nothing has transpired over the past


two decades to dissuade those of us who believe the failure to secure prosecutions may be rooted in fear of exposing collusion between the security forces and those involved in the murder of a brave journalist who knew too much. We will never accept that O’Hagan’s killing should simply be filed as an unsolved murder.


© KEVIN COOPER PHOTOLINE


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