In 2001, a journalist working for the paper in
Northern Ireland,
Martin O'Hagan, was killed by
Loyalist paramilitaries in
Lurgan, Co Armagh. O'Hagan was the first journalist to draw attention to the activities of
Billy Wright. Wright lived only a few miles from O'Hagan in north Armagh, and had attempted to have the journalist murdered in 1992. The threat was sufficient to cause O'Hagan to temporarily move to the
Sunday World office in
Dublin, and then to
Cork. He continued working for the newspaper, returning to his family in Lurgan in the late 1990s. When killed, O'Hagan became the first reporter covering the Northern Ireland conflict to be killed by paramilitaries. In 2005 the paper was sued by a well known Dublin criminal figure
Martin "the Viper" Foley after it reported that he was a leading figure in gang related crime and had links with the IRA elements. Foley argued that the report placed his life in jeopardy and sought to gag the paper. The attempt failed as the High Court rejected his allegations and refused to prevent further reporting. In 2010 the paper won a landmark legal ruling when a privacy and defamation case taken by Ruth Hickey was dismissed by the President of the High Court Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns. The ruling copperfastened the importance of freedom of expression in Irish law and stated that it can only be outweighed by the right to privacy in limited circumstances. Mr Justice Kearns also defended the right of the newspaper to publish information that was clearly in the public domain on the internet (in this case the infamous "zip up your
mickey" telephone voicemail rant by
Twink whose husband had left her for Ms Hickey). On 19 March 2006,
Sunday World reporter Hugh Jordan tracked down former Sinn Féin official and
MI5 and
PSNI informant
Denis Donaldson at a remote, rustic cottage in County Donegal. Sixteen days later, Donaldson was murdered there, and the paper was heavily criticised for identifying and showing a photo of the location. In 2009 the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the killing. On 1 November 2009, Northern Editor Jim McDowell attracted complaints to the
Press Complaints Commission after the paper published on the front page the photograph of a man hanging from a bridge, having killed himself under the headline "Halloween Horror". McDowell claimed on
Stephen Nolan's
BBC Radio Ulster show on 2 November that it was meant to dissuade individuals thinking about suicide but the decision to publish was condemned by suicide awareness and support groups. ==Awards==