Brutal end of IRA double agent

BELFAST - What looks to be the long arm of republican vengeance yesterday reached inside a remote Irish mountain cottage and took the life of Denis Donaldson, the former IRA and Sinn Fein member who was recently unmasked as a police agent.

One or more assassins cornered the 56-year-old republican, gunning him down in the primitive ramshackle cottage where he had hidden himself away from the world. There were unconfirmed reports last night that one of his hands had been cut off.

The cottage is in the Blue Stack Mountains near the Donegal village of Glenties, a rugged and sparsely populated area.

It seemed he felt safe there, even though last month his presence was publicised.

There is a republican tradition of carrying out what are called "executions" of known informers. The IRA makes no secret of its hatred and contempt for informers and agents in its ranks.

But finding out who killed Donaldson and whether his assassination was sanctioned by the IRA leadership could determine the immediate political future of Northern Ireland.

The killing sent tremors through the Irish peace process, since if the Irish Republican Army is judged to have been responsible this phase of the process will come to a sudden halt.

The IRA last night declared it had "no involvement whatsoever" in the killing, an assertion that will be thoroughly tested by police on both sides of the border.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern are due in Armagh in Northern Ireland today to launch an initiative aimed at restoring the Northern Ireland Assembly and eventually putting together a coalition to include Sinn Fein and Unionists.

But if the IRA is shown to be responsible, the ambition of the British and Irish governments to put together a new cross-community government will be in ruins, because Unionists will refuse to share power with Sinn Fein.

Certainly the Rev Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, will be making no conciliatory move until the question of the Donaldson killing has been answered.

Donaldson was found by Irish police after they broke down his door about 5pm yesterday.

He had disappeared in December after being outed as a security force agent, admitting he had worked for the Special Branch for 20 years.

He was interrogated by Sinn Fein activists and then apparently told he was free to go.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, who said at the time that Donaldson had not been under threat from the republican movement, yesterday condemned the killing.

Last month Donaldson was tracked down by the Sunday World to a Donegal cottage, looking thin and dishevelled.

The cottage, which was described as being barely habitable, with no electricity or running water, was pictured in its March 19 issue.

Donaldson told the paper in an interview: "How did you find this place? You don't see much of anyone here, not even the Gardai. They've been up and down past there, but they never came in. I'm not hiding. I just want to be left alone."

As months have gone by since his unmasking, the assumption has grown that the IRA had decided not to move against him. Many in its ranks harboured feelings of betrayal and hatred towards him, but everyone knew that his assassination would set back, probably for years, Sinn Fein's hopes of getting back into government.

The possibilities exist that he could have been killed by individual members or ex-members of the IRA or by a breakaway republican dissident group.

In recent years Donaldson had been an important apparatchik within Sinn Fein, and he was a senior member of the IRA in Belfast for many years. Some of those he served with in the IRA may hold him personally responsible for the jailing of IRA members or even of deaths at the hands of the security forces.

His killing was condemned by Ahern, who called it a brutal murder, and by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who said he was "completely appalled by this barbaric act".

- INDEPENDENT