Protestant Militants Take Blame in Journalist’s Slaying

A shadowy Protestant gang claimed responsibility Saturday for shooting to death a Catholic investigative journalist, the first such slaying in the 30-year history of this British province’s conflict.

The killing of Martin O’Hagan, 51, as he walked home from a pub in his hometown of Lurgan raised pressure on Britain to crack down on outlawed Protestant groups, which are supposed to be observing cease-fires in support of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord.

A caller claiming to represent the Red Hand Defenders told the BBC that O’Hagan had been assassinated for committing “crimes” against Protestant militants.

That evidently referred to the journalist’s reputation for exposing the murders, drug dealing and other criminal rackets run by the Protestant paramilitary underworld.

Police say “Red Hand Defenders” is a name often used as cover by two established outlawed groups, the Ulster Defense Assn. and the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which are officially observing truces but have been linked to attacks this year on Roman Catholics.

The Loyalist Volunteers draw support from Lurgan’s most hard-line Protestant neighborhoods and had previously threatened to kill O’Hagan for his reports.

Police said O’Hagan was shot at least twice by a gunman in a car. His wife, Marie, was standing beside him but was not hit. The vehicle was found, burning, several hundred yards from the O’Hagan home.

The reporter, who worked for the Sunday World newspaper of Dublin, had fled Northern Ireland in 1993 after the tabloid’s Belfast office was bombed and he received a death threat from Billy Wright, who later founded the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

O’Hagan’s editor, Jim McDowell, said the journalist had felt sufficiently safe to live in Lurgan after Wright was killed in prison in 1997.