O'Hagan, Martin

▪ 2002

      Northern Irish journalist (b. June 23, 1950, Lurgan, County Armagh [now in Craigavon district], N.Ire.—d. Sept. 28, 2001, Lurgan), was a former member of the Official Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the first working journalist to be murdered in Northern Ireland since the beginning of the “Troubles” in the late 1960s. O'Hagan, who was born a Roman Catholic, joined the military wing of the socialist Official IRA as a young man. In the early 1970s he was imprisoned for transporting guns, but he later renounced sectarian violence. He was released in 1978. After studying sociology through the Open University and at the University of Ulster, O'Hagan became an investigative journalist. As a reporter for the Dublin-based tabloid newspaper Sunday World, he specialized in exposés on the Protestant paramilitary groups, notably the Ulster Volunteer Force and the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force. O'Hagan was shot dead near his home.

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