MI5 ‘asked paramilitary group to assassinate Irish prime minister’, newly disclosed documents reveal

A protestant paramilitary group wrote to former Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey to warn him that MI5 had asked them to assassinate him, according to newly disclosed documents. The Ulster Volunteer Force – a loyalist group classified as a terrorist organisation by the UK – contacted Haughey during his third term as Taoiseach in 1987, claiming that two years earlier, an MI5 agent had provided information about his home, his cars and the yacht he used to reach his private island, and encouraged them to assassinate him.