NUJ vigil in Belfast marks 25 years since journalist Martin O'Hagan's murder
A crowd gathered in Belfast on 28 September to mark 25 years since NUJ member Martin O'Hagan was killed by the LVF. The union is demanding the release of a long-delayed Police Ombudsman report.
NUJ marks quarter-century campaign for justice over O'Hagan killing
A large crowd assembled in Belfast on Sunday to honour investigative journalist Martin O'Hagan and renew calls for justice, nuj.org.uk reports, on the 25th anniversary of his murder.
O'Hagan, secretary of the NUJ Belfast and District branch and a journalist at Sunday World, was shot dead by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) on 28 September 2001 as he walked home with his wife Marie from their local pub in Lurgan. No one has ever been convicted of the killing.
The vigil was held outside the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland's office in Writer's Square and was led by Fran McNulty, NUJ joint president. Laura Davison, NUJ general secretary, and O'Hagan's daughters Niamh and Tina were also in attendance. Kevin Cooper, O'Hagan's colleague at the Belfast and District branch, opened proceedings and unfurled a new branch banner marking the NUJ's 25-year campaign for justice.
Séamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, called for the immediate release of the Police Ombudsman's report into the handling of O'Hagan's murder — a report commissioned in 2013 that has yet to be published — and demanded a new independent investigation. Anne Hailes, branch chair, read Grahame Davies' poem "The Journalist" before the gathering closed with a minute's silence and a rendition of the traditional piper lament "Flowers of the Forest".
Following the vigil, the union held a seminar titled "25 Years Demanding Justice" at the Ramada Hotel in Belfast. The panel included McNulty, Davison, Rebecca Black of PA and Richard Sullivan, Sunday World Northern editor. Sullivan said O'Hagan "was targeted deliberately because he was a journalist… because he dared to expose the truth." Black applauded the NUJ for "keeping Martin O'Hagan's name in the headlines and demanding action."
Davison announced that the NUJ would seek an urgent meeting with the Police Ombudsman following Dooley's call for the report's immediate publication.
After the seminar, Davison, Dooley and McNulty accompanied Niamh and Tina O'Hagan to St Anne's Cathedral, where they also paid tribute to Lyra McKee, another member of the NUJ Belfast and District branch, who was killed in Derry in 2019 while covering a riot as a freelance journalist.
Source: Google News UK — Crime (en)