Over the weekend  Gardai  continued  to question a prominent dissident republican over the murder of IRA informer Denis Donaldson.

He was named as Gary Donnelly, a member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and aged in his 40s. He is  from Londonderry but was arrested Clontibret, on Saturday evening.

He can be held for up to three days under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act, 1939 .This is the third arrest in relation to the investigation

Mr Donaldson, a former senior Sinn Fein official from east Belfast, was shot dead at a remote cottage in County Donegal in April 2006.

Four months earlier he had been expelled from the party after admitting being a paid British spy for 20 years.

Donaldson had lifelong links with the Irish republican movement, having served time in the Maze Prison in the 1970s, and contested the 1983 Westminster elections for Sinn Fein before becoming the party’s group administrator in the Stormont assembly a decade ago.

In 2002 he was arrested by the PSNI, supposedly in connection with a republican spy ring, though it later emerged that the raid on Sinn Féin offices which led to his arrest was part of an operation to safeguard Donaldson’s status.

He was outed as a PSNI and MI5 informant by Gerry Adams in December 2005, and went into hiding. Newspaper reports tracked him down to the isolated cottage in Donegal weeks before he was shot and killed there.

The Real IRA claimed responsibility for Donaldson’s death in 2009. An inquest into his death, originally intended for last February, has been adjourned several times  so that Gardaí can continue their investigations.

Over the weekend  Gardai  continued  to question a prominent dissident republican over the murder of IRA informer Denis Donaldson.

He was named as Gary Donnelly, a member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and aged in his 40s. He is  from Derry but was arrested Clontibret, on Saturday evening.

He can be held for up to three days under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act, 1939 .This is the third arrest in relation to the investigation

Mr Donaldson, a former senior Sinn Fein official from east Belfast, was shot dead at a remote cottage in County Donegal in April 2006.

Four months earlier he had been expelled from the party after admitting being a paid British spy for 20 years.

Donaldson had lifelong links with the Irish republican movement, having served time in the Maze Prison in the 1970s, and contested the 1983 Westminster elections for Sinn Fein before becoming the party’s group administrator in the Stormont assembly a decade ago.

In 2002 he was arrested by the PSNI, supposedly in connection with a republican spy ring, though it later emerged that the raid on Sinn Féin offices which led to his arrest was part of an operation to safeguard Donaldson’s status.

He was outed as a PSNI and MI5 informant by Gerry Adams in December 2005, and went into hiding. Newspaper reports tracked him down to the isolated cottage in Donegal weeks before he was shot and killed there.

The Real IRA claimed responsibility for Donaldson’s death in 2009. An inquest into his death, originally intended for last February, has been adjourned several times  so that Gardaí can continue their investigations.