The Northern Secretary is considering whether to declare the Loyalist Volunteer Force ceasefire over following the murder on Friday night of the Sunday World journalist Mr Martin O'Hagan.
Mr O'Hagan, the only journalist to be murdered over the course of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was shot dead because he exposed the activities of the Loyalist Volunteer Force and its leader Billy Wright, police and colleagues believe.
He was gunned down as he walked home from a night out with his wife Marie in Lurgan on Friday night. The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for both the LVF and UDA, admitted the killing, although police believe it was the work of the LVF.
It appears that Mr O'Hagan tried to protect his wife as the gunman in the back of a car fired several shots in the direction of the couple. "People tell me Martin shoved me into the hedge and used his own body to try to shield me," said Ms O'Hagan.
"It's coming back to me in flashes, but the fact that I wasn't shot dead or wounded speaks for itself," she said.
The Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, is now seeking intelligence information from the RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, to help him determine whether he should rule that the LVF has broken its ceasefire.
Dr Reid stopped short of specifying that the UDA ceasefire was no longer intact on Friday, but will be under further pressure to rule that both the LVF and UDA are in breach of their cessations.
Dr Reid said he was in contact with Sir Ronnie and that he shared "his absolute determination to track down the cowards responsible for this act of savagery".
Well-placed sources blamed a senior associate of the LVF leader Billy Wright, who was himself shot dead by the INLA in 1997, for sanctioning the killing of the 51-year-old journalist.
In 1993, Mr O'Hagan, who relentlessly exposed the activities of paramilitaries and drug dealers, was forced to leave Northern Ireland following death threats from Wright whom the reporter dubbed King Rat.
After the loyalist ceasefires the following year, he felt sufficiently secure to return to Lurgan and continue his work.
In recent weeks, he had indicated that he had concerns about renewed loyalist threats. It was reported that in recent days a person associated with the LVF accosted him on the street in Lurgan and said: "We have clocked you walking home. We know your route."
Sources in mid-Ulster said the senior LVF figure who may have ordered the murder had become "obsessive" about Wright's memory in recent months. Mr O'Hagan, who was married with three children, is to be buried today.
