Martin O'Hagan was murdered because the Loyalist Volunteer Force - under cover of the fictitious Red Hand Defenders title - and drugs dealers in mid-Ulster, generally one and the same, feared and hated him. They hated him for the brash, brave and sometimes reckless manner in which he exposed their activities.
The tabloid Sunday World suited Martin O'Hagan's style. He painted with a broad brush. He laid it on thick and fast, using striking colours, and more often than not he hit the target. His speciality was illuminating what the paramilitaries and drug dealers were up to around Portadown, Lurgan and Armagh.
Often republican and loyalist paramilitaries, the British army and RUC, and the Northern establishment were infuriated at his reporting, but it didn't silence him. He was threatened several times. In 1989 he was abducted by the IRA but managed to persuade the organisation that having good contacts in the RUC did not make him an informer.
Apart from a brief period when he retreated to work in the Republic in the face of threats from LVF leader Billy Wright he continued to live among the people he wrote about in mid-Ulster.
He had a colourful past. As an Official IRA member he served over three years in prison in the early 1970s for possession of weapons. But he put that behind him, engaged in further education and embarked on a career in journalism, and was generally accepted among the reporting confraternity. He was deeply anti-sectarian - his wife Marie is a Protestant, one of his three children attends an integrated school in Lurgan.
He was one of the chief sources for the controversial Channel 4 programme, and book, The Committee, which alleged that loyalists, certain unionist politicians and members of the RUC and British army were behind a campaign of sectarian murders of Catholics. The Committee provoked a series of libel actions, some of which are still running.
As Martin O'Hagan was buried in Lurgan yesterday the word in the area was that his death is another episode in the murderous legacy of Billy Wright, killed by the INLA in 1997. Sources suggested that one of Wright's chief lieutenants sanctioned Mr O'Hagan's killing, although he did not participate in the deed.
There is speculation that while the car used in the murder was found burnt-out near a loyalist estate in Lurgan the person who pulled the trigger may have come from the Dungannon area. If correct this same person is suspected as being responsible for the shooting dead in Portadown of a leading Ulster Volunteer Force figure, Richard Jameson, in January 2000 - a killing that intensified a still simmering LVF-UVF feud.
Wright's henchman, it is said locally, had developed obsessive traits about his former leader. He viewed Wright as a "fallen hero" and in a sense wanted to be his "avenging angel". Wright was killed by the INLA but if this LVF figure was not in a position to seek vengeance against the republican group he had to find some other target.
Who easier than a journalist who consistently exposed the ugly underbelly of the LVF. This LVF leader was conscious of the mutual loathing Wright and O'Hagan felt for each other, and consequently he too harboured a grudge against the journalist, said one local source.
It was Mr O'Hagan who dubbed Wright King Rat and cast the spotlight on the nakedly sectarian nature of his organisation and how it was deeply involved in the drugs trade.
He didn't pull his punches. He exposed and ridiculed them. Mr John White of the Ulster Democratic Party, which is linked to the UDA, said there was no "justification" for Mr O'Hagan's murder but added that over the years the reporter made many enemies among loyalists. The person who ordered his killing brought that sense of enmity to a deadly conclusion.
In remembering a courageous journalist equally one can't ignore the nature of Martin O'Hagan himself. He was fearless, but, like Veronica Guerin, he sailed close to the edge at times. He was aware of the risks and tried to minimise them, but wouldn't forsake his crusading journalism.
Four weeks before his death he indicated to a fellow journalist that he was concerned his life was again in danger. The same journalist explained his reckless/ fearless nature thus: "That was Marty. He knew the dangers, tried to avoid unnecessary risks, but yet he would never give up on a story. That was his style, and I don't think he ever really thought what happened to him would happen to him."
The pressure is now on the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, to rule on the LVF cessation. He is in contact with the RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan to determine what action he should take. If the killing of Martin O'Hagan is judged as a centrally-ordered murder then it is likely the LVF will be "specified" or declared in breach of its ceasefire.
This would not result in any "round up" of former LVF prisoners but might lead to particular LVF members - including the main suspect in Mr O'Hagan's killing - being arrested. But if the killing is viewed as the work of a dangerous but maverick obsessive then Dr Reid must decide whether there is any merit in putting pragmatism before principle by not adjudicating against the LVF. Banning one paramilitary group will increase pressure to ban all, which would put further strains on a seriously-stressed process.
Since the ceasefires and the Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland has been swimming in what one senior SDLP figure called a "moral quagmire". What were judged "necessary fictions" were observed about the state of the loyalist and republican cessations in order to buy time in which, it was hoped, all the institutions of the agreement would be allowed to bed down and stabilise.
The British and Irish governments and the Yes parties desperately want the agreement to succeed but the difficult question facing all politicians is: can new political foundations be established on a "quagmire"? There is no doubting that in the broader community some of the hope of the Good Friday accord is dissipating.
Most of the political elements promised by the agreement are in place but the paramilitaries have yet to fully deliver. The UDA in particular has been fomenting and directly engaging in sectarian confrontation while the IRA still won't make a substantive gesture on arms.
Accordingly, there is no sense of the door on one sterile form of politics being closed and another to a more positive and hopeful form of politics being opened up. That was the great hope on Good Friday 1998. But, as evidenced by the killing of Martin O'Hagan, there is no closure: the same old politics, sectarianism, hate and violence have the upper hand.