Reporters Without Borders has criticised the continuing delays in achieivng justice over the murder six years ago of Martin O’Hagan, a reporter for the Sunday World and a member of the National Union of Journalists.
“The difficulties encountered in establishing the truth are all the more shocking because they appear partly linked to a lack of will on the part of the police,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “It is incredible that the hope of revelations is now coming from members of paramilitary groups.”
Six years exactly after O’Hagan’s murder, police in Northern Ireland are examining new leads linked to the journalist’s work, since witnesses and fresh evidence appear to have only just come to light.
The press-freedom organisation, nevertheless, welcomes the setting up of an inquiry into allegedly dubious relations between the security forces and the loyalist paramilitaries at the time of the killing. The original murder investigation which followed the journalist’s death was strongly criticised for neglecting this alleged collusion. O’Hagan was at the time reportedly in the process of writing a book on links between the two groups.
In December 2006, a coroner’s inquest reached the conclusion that the journalist was killed because of his professional work and in particular because of his investigations into drug trafficking by the paramilitary Loyalist Volunteer Force. Eight potential suspects had been questioned, but in the absence of enough evidence, police had been forced to drop the case against them.
Non-governmental organisations such as British Irish Rights Watch, and the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, continued their investigations independently of the police. Thanks to their efforts, new evidence and witness accounts have now been forwarded to investigators.
Since the case was reopened, at least one member of the paramilitary groups of the time have said they are now ready to reveal key information in exchange for immunity from prosecution. This latest development could allow investigations into the journalist’s death to be reopened.
At the beginning of the 1990s, loyalist terrorist Billy Wright ordered the murder of Martin O’Hagan, but the attempt failed. The journalist was also involved as a witness in a defamation case involving allegations of collusion between police and Protestant armed groups in the 1980s. Martin O’Hagan and his wife were walking home on the evening of 28 September 2001 when the journalist was shot dead. The murder, and the impossibility of putting names to the killers, has cast a shadow over press freedom in the region.
