Martin O'Hagan

O'Hagan would often write under an assumed name or not name the subject of his articles, instead using a nickname. The person would be described in great detail: appearance, habits, haunts, associates, type of car, etc. – everything but his name, but in the Who? column (a long-running and sometimes hard-hitting page of snippets in the newspaper) he would refer to the person by name in a way which would allow the reader to link both stories.

His colleagues at the Sunday World (particularly Jim Campbell, who was also attacked in an assassination attempt by loyalist paramilitaries), and the NUJ continue to criticise police and prosecutors in Northern Ireland for the absence to date of any murder convictions. On 6 April 2008 the Sunday World published an article naming Robin King as the killer, and asked why the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) had not arrested and charged him with the murder. In the same issue the newspaper ran a story on the unveiling of a plaque in memory of O'Hagan at Belfast's Linenhall Library. The Sunday World has run a series of articles which have "targeted the O'Hagan suspects with an extremely accurate weekly account of their activities."

Writing in the NUJ newsletter "Freelance" in September 2008, Kevin Cooper said:

Five men were arrested and sent for trial in September 2008 for the murder of Martin O'Hagan. However, none were convicted.

On 28 September 2001 Martin and his wife Marie walked to Fa' Joe's Bar, a well-known mixed bar on Lurgan's Market Street, for their usual Friday night drink together. The pub had been O'Hagan's favourite for many years. As they walked home to Westland Gardens, close to the loyalist Mourneview Estate, a car pulled slowly alongside them just yards from their house. O'Hagan pushed his wife into a hedge as a gunman opened fire from the car, hitting him several times. As he lay wounded he asked his wife to call an ambulance. When she returned from doing so he was dead.

Not all of his work was controversial. In the early 1990s he collaborated with several Portadown musicians and took over a talent competition previously run by the Ulster Star newspaper in Lisburn, turning it into a Northern Ireland-wide event.

In the early 1990s, he wrote several pieces about the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade. He coined the nickname "the Rat Pack" for this group, and "King Rat" for its leader Billy Wright. Wright later founded the Loyalist Volunteer Force, a breakaway faction. He was responsible for an attack on the Sunday World offices in Belfast, and threatened to kill O'Hagan. Wright was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army in 1997.

O'Hagan was abducted by the Provisional IRA in 1989 following a report by the Sunday World about the killing of John McAnulty on 18 July 1989. He was interrogated for several days regarding the source of reports to the newspaper (supposedly from an IRA insider) and expected to be killed. He was later released unharmed. Following this incident and loyalist threats, he moved to the Cork offices of the newspaper for several years but later returned to the Belfast office.

In the late 1980s he was prominently featured in the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Committee, which made allegations of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) collusion in loyalist murders of Roman Catholics. As a witness in a subsequent libel action against the producer of the programme at the High Court in London, he said: "I have tried to be an independent and objective journalist but my conviction has hung over me like a sword, although I have always tried to be honest about it... I have always tried to be squeaky clean because people will always try to cast this up in my face."

O'Hagan became involved in republican paramilitarism from a young age and by 1972 was O/C of the Official IRA in his home town of Lurgan. On 15 December 1972, O'Hagan and his unit had planned to rob a cash-in-transit van in the Kilwilkie area of Lurgan. As they lay in wait, a routine police patrol came into the area. The police had been delivering presents to a local 8-year-old Catholic girl who had been injured in a road traffic accident that involved a police vehicle. O'Hagan gave the order to attack the police. Constable George Chambers was wounded by O'Hagan, and as he lay on the ground, O'Hagan shot him a number of further times and he died at the scene. O'Hagan then wounded two further police officers and fled the scene. A month later, O'Hagan was part of the gun team that took part in a sectarian attack on a Protestant bar in Lurgan when a young Protestant was shot in the leg. O'Hagan was arrested but later released. A short time later, O'Hagan was arrested by the army whilst in possession of two rifles. He was convicted of possession of firearms with intent, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Upon his release he was linked to other paramilitary activity in the Mid Ulster area.

Owen Martin O'Hagan (23 June 1950 – 28 September 2001) was an Irish investigative journalist from Lurgan, Northern Ireland and a former member of the Official Irish Republican Army who spent much of the 1970s in prison. He was assassinated by the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the only journalist to be killed in Northern Ireland before the killing of Lyra McKee in April 2019.