"The United Kingdom's ranking (28th) is largely due to the situation in Northern Ireland, where journalists are constantly threatened by
paramilitary groups. The investigation into the 2001 murder of Sunday World journalist Martin O'Hagan has come to a complete standstill."

I wonder why that is.

The Irish press along with that in NI, is characterised by mostly lickspittle half-wit left-wing journos without an original thought in their tiny little heads.

Here's a quiz: In this ever-so-free Ireland/NI;

How many newspapers were anti-Belfast Agreement?
How many newspapers are pro-Bush?
How many newspapers oppose devolution?
How many newspapers oppose the EU?
How many newspapers support the war in Iraq?

Answers on a postcard please....SUCH a diversity of opinion, isn't it, and so free....

Mr O'Hagan's murder was a disgrace. Was he killed because he was a journalist ? Probably. But he was no ordinary journalist, was he George ? His past was rather different from another Irish Journalist who was murdered, Veronica Guerin.

Davros

What do you mean? No need to be coy. You can't libel the dead.

I wasn't being coy Henry. I have mentioned Mr Hagan's IRA past before - and that he was named as a cop-killer by Barrie Penrose in the Spectator, 2002.
From the article -

"O’Hagan, in fact, had been the ‘adjutant’ of the Lurgan (Official IRA) active service unit, which dished out death and violence even when the Officials were on ceasefire. Such an obstacle didn’t stop him murdering Police Constable George Chambers, a father of six, in cold blood and at point-blank range.

On 15 December 1972, Chambers and his colleagues, driving in two police Land-Rovers, delivered Christmas presents to an eight-year-old girl, Linda Hughes, who had been injured in a car accident.

As they drove away from Linda’s home on the Kilwilkee estate, Chambers noticed a stolen Ford Cortina. Suspecting that it might be booby-trapped the police began moving people out of local houses. Nearby O’Hagan and his ASU unit waited in a ‘safe’ flat from where, later that morning, they planned to rob a Securicor van on a wages run. When Chambers and his colleagues unexpectedly arrived in the Land-Rovers, he ordered his men to abandon the wages robbery and attack the police. ‘Get the Peelers,’ one witness heard him say.

O’Hagan led the way, opening with a burst of semi-automatic fire. Chambers slumped to the ground, hit in the back. O’Hagan raced towards him, stood over the badly wounded officer, and pumped more bullets into him until he was dead. He then snatched Chambers’s Sterling sub-machine gun, before shooting Constable Foster in the mouth at close range. Constable Uprichard was also hit in the hand and arm. After wounding another officer, O’Hagan raced off up an alley after the rest of his fleeing gang.

O’Hagan and his men were arrested in May the following year. Gerald Duff, then 19, admitted his role in the murder, and in a signed statement named O’Hagan as Chambers’s killer. Duff was given life, although he was not the assassin.

James Shanks, the unit’s commander, also named O’Hagan as Chambers’s killer in a signed statement and was jailed. Other gang members followed suit, saying that O’Hagan had gone berserk in front of Chambers.

In custody O’Hagan kept to IRA interrogation rules, remained silent and was not charged. Martin’s brother Rory, another gang member, had already escaped across the border into the Irish Republic where he was later convicted after an IRA shoot-out with the Gardai at a dairy in Cork. Martin O’Hagan was re-arrested months later after a sectarian shooting in a Lurgan bar. A Protestant named William Houston was shot in the leg by O’Hagan's gang, but managed to escape.

Marty was again released, but was then caught red-handed by a British army patrol, transporting an Armalite and an M1 carbine across Lurgan with another (Official) IRA man. He was charged with the attempted murder of Private Ian Matterson of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a charge later dropped.

O’Hagan went down for weapons offences and was jailed for seven years, telling a police interrogator: ‘Christ, Jack. I ran out of luck tonight. Honest to God, Jack, I did no shooting. It was the Provos. We were only moving stuff. When we ran slap into a Saracen. You look on this as crime, but I don’t. It’s political. You’ve had a good catch tonight.’ Asked to make a statement, he said, ‘I don’t think I will.’

O’Hagan never forgot the luckless Gerald Duff, jailed for life for the murder he had committed. In April 1986, he wrote a full-page article in the Sunday World devoted to the plight of (the unnamed) Duff. He quoted the judge at Duff’s trial, saying that he ‘had no choice but to sentence the man to life although the real culprits were not before the court’. "

Freest press my arse

work for Newsletter try and run a republican story

work for Any Trash News try running an anti S/F story

work for Irish Times try running an anti-government story

work for Sunday world try running a factual story

Freedom only belongs to those with the keys, not those in chains

George

Clear now on why no real hurry to find out who killed o`Hagan???

If we accept the claim that what happened here was a war, I would say that there is a question, as with Pat Finucane, as to whether Mr O'Hagan was a 'casualty' or a 'victim'.

Barnshee,
I am clear now.
However, I am still in agreement with NUJ President Jim Corrigall when he said:

"Martin O'Hagan's murder represented an attack on journalism and on democracy, since journalism is such a fundamental part of the democratic process."

Not investigating O'Hagan's murder is cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's also a sign of a very large democratic deficit. How many other murders haven't been investigated because of who the victim was or was perceived to be?

O Hagans murder has to be seen in the context of the activities of loyalists in that area.

There is more than a degree of suspicion around connections between the UVF and British Forces and laterly those who defected from the UVF to the LVF.

O Hagan has complied information on that collusion and was believed to have had the names of RIR and PSNI personnel who worked with these people.
Much like Finucane and Nelson, O Hagan was a problem that could be tendered out to former allies.

His Official IRA past was well known. In fact the Sticks have been held up as a model for present day republicans by Unionist politicians including the DUP

The Irish press along with that in NI, is characterised by mostly lickspittle half-wit left-wing journos without an original thought in their tiny little heads.

Here's a quiz: In this ever-so-free Ireland/NI;

How many newspapers were anti-Belfast Agreement?
How many newspapers are pro-Bush?
How many newspapers oppose devolution?
How many newspapers oppose the EU?
How many newspapers support the war in Iraq?

Answers on a postcard please....SUCH a diversity of opinion, isn't it, and so free....

Posted by: David Vance at October 30, 2004 06:57 PM
--------------------------------
Don't these newspapers publish your letters?

Or is it a question of market economics driving newspapers to take a position most likely to increase, or at least, maintain their market share?

Or is it a question of newspapers only being free if they agree with David Vance's opinions?

His Official IRA past was well known.

Must admit I never knew about it until Davros's past. Oddly it was never mentioned in any news stories that appeared at the time of his murder.

I Knew about it before I read the Spectator article because I have friends and family in Lurgan.

Not that it legitimises his murder.