The funeral of the “fearless” journalist and author Robert Fisk takes...

The funeral took place when veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk died at the age of 74 after falling ill at his home in Dublin last Friday.

The private ceremony was held “in accordance with current government guidelines and in the hope of protecting our friends and family,” said the obituary posted on Monday.

The journalist and author, who was uncomfortable at his home in Dublin on Friday and was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he died shortly afterwards, was honored.

President Michael D. Higgins said he learned “with great sadness” of the journalist’s death.

“In his death in the world of journalism and his informed commentary on the Middle East, he lost one of his best commentators,” he said.

“I have had the privilege of knowing Robert Fisk since the 1990s, and of meeting him in some countries that he wrote about with such understanding. I met him in Iraq and last year I had my last meeting with him in Beirut during my official visit to Lebanon.

“I knew that becoming an Irish citizen meant a lot to him. And his influence on young journalism and political writing practitioners was confirmed by the large audiences that attended the occasions he spoke in Ireland. “

Born in England, Fisk had a long relationship with Ireland dating back to 1972 when he moved to Belfast to work as a Northern Ireland correspondent for the London Times at the height of trouble.

He then received his PhD from Trinity College and completed a thesis on the neutrality of Ireland during World War II. He owned a house in Dalkey, which he lived in for many years.

After making a name for himself in Northern Ireland, Fisk moved briefly to Portugal and then to Beirut, where he worked as a Middle East correspondent for the Times. Among other things, he reported on the Lebanese civil war, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. After an argument with Rupert Murdoch’s own Times, he joined the London Independent in 1989 and worked for this publication until his death. It is believed that he planned to return to the Middle East before his death.

Critical of the United States

He reported extensively on the first Gulf War and settled in Baghdad for a while. He was extremely critical of other foreign correspondents, whom he accused of covering the conflict from their hotel rooms.

He also covered the US-waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and often condemned US involvement in the region. Fisk was one of the few Western reporters who interviewed Osama bin Laden, which he did three times in the 1990s.

He also covered five Israeli invasions, the Algerian civil war, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and the 2011 Arab revolutions. He worked in the Balkans during the conflict there and recently reported on the conflict in Syria.

He has received numerous awards over the course of his career, including the Orwell Prize for Journalism, the British Press Awards International Journalist of the Year and the Foreign Reporter of the Year several times.

He received honorary degrees and doctorates from universities in several countries. In 2009 he was awarded the Trinity Society Dublin’s Historical Society gold medal.

His best-known books included The Point of No Return: The Strike That Broke the British in Ulster, Pity for the Nation: Lebanon at War, and The Great War for Civilization – The Conquest of the Middle East.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he was “sad” to hear of Fisk’s death. He was a “fearless and independent reporter with an in-depth understanding of the complexities of Middle Eastern history and politics. He helped a lot of people to better understand this complexity, ”tweeted Mr. Martin.

Fine Gael TD and former Attorney General Charlie Flanagan said he was “sad” to hear the news.

“Doesn’t always agree with his views, but I admired his courage among many great qualities May he rest in eternal peace,” he tweeted.

Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, Chief of Staff of the Irish Forces, described Fisk as a friend of Ireland and all of the Defense Forces.

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Wonderful person ‘

Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn paid tribute to his longtime friend, describing Fisk as his best friend and a wonderful person.

Fisk’s efforts to find out the truth and tell what was important had made him very special, Cockburn told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland. In a world of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, it is important to have people like Robert Fisk, he said.

The two men met in Belfast in the early 1970s when Fisk was a reporter for the Times and Cockburn was doing her PhD from Queen’s University. The two spoke at least once a week and stayed in “constant contact”.

The broadcaster Pat Kenny paid tribute to Fisk in its Newstalk program. “I lost a friend on Friday, this program lost a friend, our listeners lost an independent voice on world affairs and someone who could interpret for us the inconsistent divisions of the Middle East – both ancient and modern.

“Robert Fisk was a giant in the canon of contemporary journalism,” he said. “He had his critics, but none of them would question his integrity.

“He has put himself in danger so many times in the course of his career, which has taken him from Belfast to Beirut, from Afghanistan to Iran. Despite his analytical criticism of successive Israeli governments, he had many Israeli admirers.

“Others may have lived quiet lives, but not Robert: in a time of simple headlines he was the opposite.” He was the essence of austerity – his news gathering and fact checking were object lessons to those who would ever do it dream of filling his shoes.

“He found a happy work home in Beirut, an intersection in the Middle East that allowed him to get to trouble spots quickly.

“But the place he found healing from the vicissitudes of journalism on the front lines was in Dalkey, which has been his home for many, many years.

“He said that he found his personal paradise here”.

BBC’s John Simpson said he was “very sad to hear” that Fisk died prematurely. “He will be missed very much,” he said.

In a tweet, Uzair Hasan Rizvi, a journalist with the AFP news agency, described Fisk as “one of the best foreign correspondents with a deep knowledge of the Middle East”.

The official Twitter page of Trinity College Dublin, where Fisk had studied, was also saddened by the death of the “renowned journalist and author”.