Fifteen years to this day, Martin O' Hagan - journalist and father - was shot dead in the street. The passage of time hasn't dimmed the shock, and talk of it is still tinged with a surreal feeling that it actually happened. Sadly, it did.

Marty's face and cheeky grin stares down on our office every day. We wouldn't have it any other way, and we still talk about him.

For the record, Drew King and his brother Robin decided to take the law into their own hands. I don't suppose his killers will ever see the inside of a prison cell for what they have done. People say their sentence is living with their conscience, but that kind of trash doesn't have a conscience.

After all, they appear to have had little difficulty in the 15 years since Martin was gunned down on the street - yards from his own front door - as he walked his wife home from their local pub in Lurgan.

This was three years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement - it was all supposed to be over. Martin had handed back the personal protection weapon issued in the wake of death threats from the LVF in the belief he no longer needed it.

Not that he would have used it.

Martin was tenacious, irreverent, fun to be with - at times he was a pain in the ass, but above all he was born to be a reporter.

Ask a cartoonist to caricature a hack and he would have drawn Marty - slightly dishevelled, shuffling, a bit mixed-up - all of which disguised a steely determination and doggedness. It was a doggedness that contributed to his tragic and untimely end.

I've always said Billy Wright may as well have pulled the trigger on Marty. By the time Marty was killed, Wright himself was already dead - shot by the INLA inside the Maze. Marty's killers were simply carrying out Wright's orders. Marty pursued the LVF leader relentlessly, driven by a supreme indignation that a mass killer had been afforded some kind of heroic status, appalled at what he had been allowed to get away with. It was Marty who came up with the 'King Rat' moniker.

While other media outlets and political parties fawned and traipsed in Wright's wake, the Sunday World and Marty exposed him for what he was. A more evil man it would be hard to meet.

Marty was the embodiment of what the Sunday World was, and still is. The staff of this newspaper have known nothing but threats and attacks - our former editor was shot and seriously wounded by the UVF, the office has been bombed and fire-bombed, my predecessor was brutally assaulted in the street, and almost without exception the staff have had their lives threatened - bullets in the post, intimidation and terror inflicted on families.

And this happens in a major UK city, not Zimbabwe or Turkey - the assault on free speech and freedom of the press has been allowed to go unchecked for far too long. Shopkeepers have been threatened and burned out of their businesses for stocking our newspaper - and what happens? Nothing. It still continues. This is our community too, and putting a tie on a gangster will never make him a good guy.

The people in this country have had to swallow hard. We voted for the Good Friday Agreement, part of which meant the prison gates were thrown open - mass killers walked free. There is an inescapable feeling that the law-abiding citizens of this part of Ireland have been completely let down. We bought peace at a high price, and our reward was to have our pockets picked.

We have watched as successive governments have bent over backwards to facilitate the likes of the King brothers. I can only conclude there is no will to put Marty's killers behind bars. The police, the NIO and the Executive don't want to know.

We contacted Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness's office on Thursday afternoon - it took them 48 hours to issue a soft-tone response. It's in stark contrast to the reaction of the Dublin government and gardai to the murder of another of our colleagues, Veronica Guerin - heaven and earth was moved to secure convictions, and quite rightly.

Believe me, we mourned Veronica's passing as much as Marty's. I remember then Northern Ireland Secretary of State, John Reid, standing in our office and telling our distraught staff that he would ensure "no stone would be left unturned" in the pursuit of Marty's killers. Hollow words.

The next day the Sunday World staff performed a remarkable feat by putting out a paper which Marty would have been proud of, under immense physical and emotional pressure. And that is why the Sunday World cannot be detached from what is happening in Northern Ireland - we live here too, we've lost someone.

Until it happens you can never understand what it's like - it's cataclysmic. We've spent a career covering the murderous deeds of others, knocking on families' doors. Now we were part of it.

And the threats go on - peace wasn't supposed to be like this, but the lily-livered approach of the British and Stormont demeans the peace process. The struggle goes on.

I think - I know - Marty would be proud of us.

We are proud of him.

Irish Independent