Colin Breen

A former RUC officer was one of the two men who exposed the whereabouts of the self-confessed British spy Denis Donaldson in a Sunday tabloid last month.

Colin Breen, who worked in Tennent Street station in Belfast and is now retired, travelled to the Glenties area of Co Donegal with a Sunday World journalist to track down Donaldson.

Breen, who allegedly has close ties with the Special Branch, secretly videotaped Donaldson outside his remote hideaway five miles from Glenties. He is not a Sunday World staff member, and the newspaper’s regular staff photographers were not used.

The newspaper printed the pictures and location of Donaldson, which until then was unknown to the public. The secretly-filmed video was also sold to a number of British television stations. Donaldson was shot dead at the cottage on Tuesday.

Gardai refused to say whether the Sunday World journalist who wrote the story, Hugh Jordan, or Breen would be interviewed as part of their inquiries.