Owen Martin O'Hagan (23 June 1950 – 28 September 2001) was an Irish investigative journalist from Lurgan, Northern Ireland. After leaving the Official Irish Republican Army (Official IRA) and serving time in prison, he began a 20-year journalism career, during which he reported on paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland before being murdered in September 2001.
Born in Lurgan to Catholic and republican parents, several members of his family became prominent in paramilitary activities and politics. After returning to Lurgan from West Germany, where his father had worked for the British Army, he left school to work at his family's television repair shop. He soon became involved in both the Official Sinn Féin (which, after renouncing paramilitary activity, evolved into the Workers' Party) and the Official IRA. He was arrested and questioned over various crimes, including the murder of a police officer and a soldier, and was eventually sentenced for firearms offences in 1973.
After serving five years in Long Kesh prison, O'Hagan began a journalism career with Fortnight and the Sunday World. He reported on violent and drug-related crimes committed by paramilitaries, like Robin Jackson, and worked with the Channel 4 programme Dispatches on alleged killings by security forces and Loyalists. He was abducted in 1989 by members of the Provisional IRA, and angered Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leader Billy Wright after reporting on his activities.
While Wright was killed in prison in 1997, threats continued to be made against O'Hagan by members of the new Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), which Wright had founded. On 28 September 2001, while walking home from the pub with his wife, O'Hagan was shot from a moving car and died at the scene. The chief suspects were members of the LVF, but no one has yet been sentenced for the crime. Trials were held against five men in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but the cases soon collapsed and one suspect was dismissed as a witness. Security forces have been accused of covering for O'Hagan's murderers, with accusations of direct police involvement in the killing. O'Hagan was the only journalist killed while working during The Troubles, and the last killed in the United Kingdom before the death of Lyra McKee in 2019.
Early life and family
O'Hagan was born in Lurgan in the north-east of County Armagh in 1950, the oldest of six children. Both his parents were from Lurgan, but O'Hagan spent a large period of his childhood in British military bases across West Germany due to his father's career with the British Army. His grandfather had also served in the military, being evacuated from Dunkirk. When O'Hagan was four his family returned to Lurgan, where he attended school and his father ran a television repair shop. Following his O Levels, he left education and began working at his father's shop. His parents soon separated, and his father left for London.
His family had a history of Irish republicanism: his uncle was J. B. O'Hagan, who escaped from Mountjoy Prison in 1973, and his cousin was Sinn Féin politician Dara O'Hagan. The family were Catholic. His brother, Rory O'Hagan, was convicted in the 1970s after an Official Irish Republican Army (Official IRA) shootout with the Gardaí in County Cork.
Official IRA membership
As a teenager, O'Hagan joined the Official Sinn Féin (later the Workers' Party), and made friends with then-general secretary Máirín de Burca, with whom he pelted Richard Nixon's car with eggs during a 1970 visit to Dublin. He was fined £2 for the incident and let go. His mother had insisted he live in the Irish capital for a while to escape the political troubles of Lurgan, but this appears to have backfired.
While his membership of the Official IRA was known publicly, alleged key details remained practically unknown until the publication of a 2002 book entitled Milestones in Murder, by Sunday World reporter Hugh Jordan. The details were summarised in a November 2002 article by Barrie Penrose in The Spectator. Back home from Dublin, O'Hagan had joined the Lurgan unit of the Official IRA, enjoying their socialist-republican policies and military wing. He soon became the "adjutant" of the group. In 1971, a few years after The Troubles began, O'Hagan was one of many republican suspects who was interned at the paramilitary detention centre at Long Kesh (also known as "The Maze").