{"id":652869,"date":"2026-10-12T23:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T23:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/652869\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T23:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T23:02:11","slug":"trial-date-for-man-accused-of-murdering-denis-donaldson-to-be-fixed-next-month-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/652869\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial date for man accused of murdering Denis Donaldson to be fixed next month \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The trial date of a man charged with the 2006 murder of British spy Denis Donaldson is to be fixed next month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Antoin Duffy, who is in his 40s, of no fixed address, appeared before the non-jury <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/special-criminal-court\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/special-criminal-court\/\">Special Criminal Court<\/a> on Monday via video-link from prison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He is charged with the murder of Donaldson in Cloghercor, Doochary, Co Donegal, between April 3rd and 4th, 2006, after being extradited from Scotland earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He was also charged with possession of a shotgun and ammunition \u201cwith intent to endanger life\u201d at the same date and location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He was also charged with the attempted murder of a second man, Liam Copeland McGinley, at Meenaboll in Co Donegal, on November 19th, 2007, and with possession of a shotgun and possession of ammunition on the same date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Donaldson (55) was shot dead at a remote cottage near Glenties months after he was exposed as a paid agent for Special Branch and MI5 since the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In 2009, dissident republican group the Real IRA claimed the killing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Donaldson was also a former administrator for Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Stormont Assembly team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Appearing before the non-jury court on Monday, a barrister representing Duffy confirmed he had been served with the book of evidence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said his client would be seeking legal aid, adding that the solicitor for the defendant was Cormac McDonnell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Caroline Biggs gave the defendant the alibi warning, and said that if he in any way relied on an alibi, then all details of it should be supplied within 14 days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The case has been adjourned until November 9th, when a trial date is expected to be set. \u2013 PA <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial date of a man charged with the 2006 murder of British spy Denis Donaldson is to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1485,61,60,43,31297],"class_list":["post-652869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donegal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-special-criminal-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}