“Our society has a tragic history of violence.”

Mark asked “Why?” Kieran Doherty, aged 31, was reportedly bound, stripped and shot on the outskirts of Londonderry on Wednesday. Because they can would seem to be the simple answer. After all, that’s all the reasoning others previously required. And they can all still, apparently, “look back on their IRA involvement with pride.” The BBC has some additional background

In November 2009 Mr Doherty gave an interview to the Derry Journal newspaper in which he claimed he had been approached by the security service MI5 while trying to set up a cigarette manufacturing company. According to the paper, he was repeatedly turned down for a licence by Revenue and Customs and was then approached by an MI5 agent. “I think the whole thing is a set up in order to try and recruit informers,” he told the newspaper. In January this year, Mr Doherty again contacted the same newspaper after the PSNI searched his home. The search came after 500,000 euros worth of cannabis was found in a house in County Donegal. Mr Doherty told the newspaper that he had no involvement with the drugs and that the house belonged to a Republican prisoner whom he had met in Portlaoise prison. It is understood that Mr Doherty was jailed on a robbery charge.

On UTV Live the Sunday Tribune’s Northern Editor, Suzanne Breen, stated that she had met Kieran Doherty in 2003 when he was “O/C Real IRA prisoners” in Portlaoise Prison and that it was her understanding that he had remained an “active republican” on his release. Suzanne Breen also identified the “Republican prisoner” who owned the house in Donegal as Seamus McGreevy – who recently committed suicide while fighting extradition to Lithuania on attempted arms smuggling charges as the result of a sting operation involving MI5, the garda, and Lithuanian police.

Pete Baker