Martin O'Hagan

Owen Martin O'Hagan was born on 23 June 1950 in Lurgan in the north-east of County Armagh, the oldest of six children. Both his parents were from Lurgan, but O'Hagan spent a large period of his childhood in British military bases across West Germany due to his father's career with the British Army. His grandfather had also served in the military, being evacuated from Dunkirk. When O'Hagan was four his family returned to Lurgan, where he attended school and his father ran a television repair shop. The family were Catholic. His brother, Rory O'Hagan, was convicted in the 1970s after an Official Irish Republican Army (Official IRA) shootout with the Gardaí in County Cork. ==Official IRA membership==

As a teenager, O'Hagan joined the Official Sinn Féin (later the Workers' Party), and made friends with then-general secretary Máirín de Burca, He was fined £2 for the incident and let go. His mother had insisted he live in the Irish capital for a while to escape the political troubles of Lurgan, but this appears to have backfired. Back home from Dublin, O'Hagan had joined the Lurgan unit of the Official IRA, enjoying their socialist-republican policies and military wing. He soon became the "adjutant" of the group. In 1971, a few years after The Troubles began, O'Hagan was one of many republican suspects who was interned at the paramilitary detention centre at Long Kesh (also known as "The Maze"). On 15 December 1972, Police Constable George Chambers and his colleagues were driving through Lurgan's Kilwilkie estate after delivering Christmas presents to the house of an injured child. While there, they noticed a stolen Ford Cortina and suspecting it to be booby-trapped began evacuating the area. O'Hagan and his active service unit were hid in a flat nearby, from which they planned to rob a van later that day. Upon noticing the police, the group left the flat and attacked. The group fired semiautomatic guns towards the police, with Chambers being shot. O'Hagan allegedly then stood over his injured body and fired bullets until he had died. Following this, he shot another in the mouth before running away down an alley. In May 1973, O'Hagan and his men were arrested on suspicion of the crimes. 19-year-old Gerald Duff admitted his role in the murder and was given a life sentence. The unit's commander, James Shanks, was also jailed. Both named O'Hagan as Chambers' killer in signed statements, and other group members confirmed the matter. While being interrogated O'Hagan remained silent, and was never charged with the murder. Later that year, he was arrested after a shooting in a Lurgan bar, where a Protestant man named William Houston was shot in the leg by O'Hagan's group. He was released again, but caught by a British Army patrol transporting an Armalite rifle and an M1 carbine across Lurgan. He was charged with the attempted murder of Private Ian Matterson of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, but the charge was dropped. However, he was found guilty of firearms offences and was sentenced to another seven years at Long Kesh. While serving this sentence, he slowly began to turn away from his paramilitary past. He soon began studying sociology with the Open University and later the University of Ulster. He was released from prison in 1978. ==Journalism career==

After he was released from prison, O'Hagan returned to north Armagh and began reporting on clashes between loyalist and republican paramilitaries. becoming assistant editor underneath Pollak. O'Hagan soon began doing freelance work for The Irish Times, and in 1987 he joined the Belfast office of the Irish tabloid Sunday World, managed by Jim Campbell at the time. The paper reported on the sectarian violence of the Troubles, with a specific focus on the crimes of Robin Jackson (known as "The Jackal"), an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leader who had been involved in various brutal killings. In 2000, he appeared at London's High Court during one of the libel cases, where he stated "I have always tried to be squeaky clean because people will always try to cast this up in my face". While he often engaged in investigative journalism and serious stories, he was largely seen as a tabloid writer, with his colleague Jim McDowell saying "All he wanted was to be a hack". Bradbury later claimed to know the identity of O'Hagan's killer and had informed the Sunday Business Post. ==Personal life==

O'Hagan was married to Marie (), a Protestant woman who he met at the Carnegie Inn (better known as "Father Joes" or "Fa' Joes") in Lurgan. As one of the few "mixed" pubs in the town, the Catholic/Protestant couple would visit the pub often, including on the night of his murder. They had three daughters. While he had earlier republican ties, O'Hagan was later seen as being unsectarian, with Toolis describing O'Hagan's attempts to drink at a loyalist bar on the night preceding The Twelfth. He was an atheist and a Marxist. ==Assassination==

O'Hagan had expressed concerns that he was being followed by members of the LVF, who he had angered by reporting their crimes. on Lurgan's Market Street, arriving there at around 8 pm. Two hours later, they began to walk home, taking a different route than their normal one. At 10:30 pm, while walking down Westfield Gardens and near the Mourneview estate, a silver Subaru Impreza parked outside a neighbour's house began to slowly move forwards. A gunman leaned out the driver's window and shot towards the couple. Marie reported that O'Hagan had called out "It's Mackers" as he saw the shooter, suggesting that he knew who his killers were. O'Hagan pushed his wife into their neighbour's hedge, while he took three bullets in the back. Following the impact, he told his wife to phone an ambulance, but he died before she returned from making the call. A silver Ford Orion used by the shooters to escape was later found burned out on the Mourneview estate. Police suggested the Orion may have been left as a decoy. Investigation Police stated that their chief suspects were members of the LVF and associates of Billy Wright. O'Hagan's murder was later claimed by members of the LVF, who often operated as the Red Hand Defenders (RHD). They accused him of committing "crimes against the loyalist people". Hours before O'Hagan's death, Reid had warned the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) over its ceasefire breaches, but had not gone as far as fully condemning them. Martin McGuinness, then-Education Minister for Sinn Féin, called Reid "very foolish" for walking back on actions to declare the ceasefire broken, following O'Hagan's murder. Bertie Ahern, the then-Taoiseach, called it "senseless and brutal", while Sir Reg Empey, the Acting First Minister of Northern Ireland, denounced O'Hagan's murder as "an attack on democracy itself". Upper Bann MLA and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party David Trimble stated that "[he was] shocked and appalled by this cowardly act, which must be condemned by all right-thinking people" and called on the British government to seriously consider whether the LVF ceasefires must be regarded as violated. More than 1,500 people attended, including: • Jim Campbell, O'Hagan's colleague at the Sunday World • Des Browne, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office • Bríd Rodgers, local SDLP MLA A minute of silence was held by MLAs at Stormont in tribute to O'Hagan. Neither John Reid nor David Trimble attended O'Hagan's funeral. ==Aftermath==

Just over a month after O'Hagan's death, a Catholic taxi driver attending a call in the Mourneview estate was shot at in a murder attempt. Sinn Féin MLA for Upper Bann Dara O'Hagan said the attack was part of an ongoing attempt by loyalist bitter enders to provoke Irish republican paramilitaries back into armed conflict. A similar event happened in Lurgan five years earlier, when Billy Wright's men murdered a Catholic taxi driver as a "birthday present" for their leader. Murder trial On 16 September 2008, four men appeared at Lisburn Magistrate's Court over O'Hagan's murder: • 28-year-old Neil Hyde – a member of the LVF since 1996, • 43-year-old Nigel William Leckey – accused of killing O'Hagan Following a request by police to interview him in June 2002, he fled to the Bellshill area of Glasgow, and then to a LVF-owned council house in Bargeddie. At a bail hearing in October 2008, prosecution lawyers said it was alleged that Leckey had stored the car used by O'Hagan's killers. A witness, known as "Witness A", claimed that on the night of 28 September 2001, he was contacted by one of the accused to arrange a meeting the following morning. The accused had apparently lost control of the car following the shooting, and required help picking up debris from the scene. According to the witness, they then went to a yard owned by Leckey, who had cleaned the car. Leckey was granted bail by the judge, as he was not a "principal party" in the shooting. In July 2010, murder charges were dropped against Drew King and three of the other men. In September of that year, King took the Sunday World to court, claiming damages for alleged harassment and misuse of private information. Jim McDowell, then-editor of the paper, had published information regarding King's relationships with women, which he defended as part of a character profile. In January 2012, Belfast Crown Court was informed that Hyde had agreed to become an "assisting offender" or supergrass in investigating O'Hagan's death. Hyde stated that he was inside a Lurgan flat on the evening of the murder: he was aware that a loaded gun was present, but was not involved in the killing. He gave the police the names of those in the flat, and also shared information regarding the murder of Graham Edward Marks in 2001. While Hyde originally agreed to testify against O'Hagan's killers, a decision was made by Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory in January 2013 to dismiss the use of his witness statement as unreliable. In June 2013, the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland appealed his lenient sentence with the changed circumstances, but they later dropped the review. The appeal was the first of its kind under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Calls for investigation The NUJ has called for investigations into O'Hagan's death several times. On the 18th anniversary of O'Hagan's death, NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet and Irish general secretary Séamus Dooley called for an independent inquiry focusing on the assassination itself and the failures of the police in securing a conviction. Dooley has reiterated his concerns multiple times, especially following the murder of Lyra McKee in 2019. On the 19th anniversary of his death, the NUJ released a statement calling for UK and Ireland leaders Boris Johnson and Micheál Martin to support an independent inquiry, and said the failure to convict O'Hagan's killers "emboldens those who see themselves as being above the law". In September 2014, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović called for UK authorities to launch an investigation into the murder, arguing that "the failure to prosecute can create an environment of impunity for those who might attack journalists". In May 2015, O'Hagan's family announced a £50,000 reward for anyone who had information leading to the conviction of his killers. Allegations of corruption and involvement In 2003, a security source claimed that a loyalist paramilitary questioned over O'Hagan's murder was an informer and Army intelligence agent. They claimed to have accessed files detailing the informer's handlers and the locations of their meetings, including Dungannon (where the gun used to kill O'Hagan was from). A PSNI detective refused to comment on the allegations, but families of those believed to have been killed by the informant had suspected his links previously. Several of O'Hagan's former colleagues at the Sunday World have alleged police involvement in covering up his death: • Jim Campbell suggested that police were reluctant to convict anyone due to members of the LVF being "paid police informers". He claimed the names of O'Hagan's assassins were known by the police within hours of his death, and had been warned that LVF members were "driving round Lurgan as if they were looking for someone". • Richard Sullivan, the Sunday World Belfast Bureau Chief, confirmed the paper's exposing of his killers and promised to continue to "highlight the deficit in Martin's case". On 28 May 2015, BBC aired a Panorama documentary entitled ''Britain's Secret Terror Deals'', which investigated claims that British security forces colluded with paramilitary groups. PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton denied any police cover-up regarding O'Hagan's death and the subsequent investigations. In the episode, former Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan said that state agencies had "operated outside the rules" and were responsible for the deaths of "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people". In 2017, Séamus Dooley also hinted at links between the police and those responsible for the murder, saying the lack of conviction "cast a long shadow over the criminal justice system and policing in Northern Ireland". Police Ombudsmen reports In October 2006, O'Hagan's siblings made a formal request to Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, raising concerns that no one had been charged in the five years since the murder despite the police apparently knowing who was responsible. Eight years into the investigation, new Police Ombudsman Michael Maguire was able to secure police intelligence regarding the murders of O'Hagan and around 60 others, after he threatened the PSNI with a court case. Effects on the Sunday World Since O'Hagan's death, Sunday World owner Independent News & Media has afforded security measures to its journalists, such as installing bulletproof windows and panic buttons in their houses. Staff at the paper had received around 50 recorded threats by September 2011, such as former crime editor Paul Williams. In June 2018, the paper's Dublin office was sent a bottle labelled "sulphuric acid", which was seen an attack on its staff. The package was addressed to a former employee of the paper, and one administrator was injured while receiving it. In May 2020, the Sunday World and the Sunday Life were warned by police that the Ulster Defence Association were planning attacks on their journalists. Sunday World crime reporter Patricia Devlin, who like O'Hagan has reported on drug gangs and their paramilitary connections, has received threats and been doxed by fake accounts and criminals featured in her stories. ==See also==