THE DIRECTOR of Public Prosecutions is considering whether or not to bring charges in the case of Denis Donaldson, the former IRA and Sinn Fein shot dead by dissident terrorists in Donegal more than six years ago.
The former senior Sinn Fein official had confessed to spying for police Special Branch and secret service MI5 just months before he was killed.
Donaldson, 56, was murdered in his remote home at Classey, Cloghercor, outside Glenties on April 4th 2006.
He had been operating as a British spy for 20 years and was shot four times in the chest, face, arm and hand in a rented cottage.
Although there have been three arrests relating to Donaldson’s brutal murder, nobody has ever been charged in connection with it.
Two were arrested in Donegal and a third man – a leading dissident – in Derry.
Supt Michael Finan told an inquest in Letterkenny today that a file on the Donaldson killing had been submitted to the DPP.
Further information had been sought by the DPP and given to him by Gardai, he said.
The case was adjourned until September at which point Coroner Denis McCauley said he hoped to be in a position to have a pre-case hearing, if there weren’t any charges brought.
Witness statements in the case were handed in by a state solicitor to the coroner today.
The family’s solicitor Ciaran Shiels told Mr McCauley that they “took some comfort” from the terms of reference in which a future inquest would take place.
This would include an examination of Mr Donaldson’s life whilst living in the North as well as information on all who met him in the days before his death in the Co Donegal cottage.