Bid to find Nairac remains as IRA actions branded '˜a war crime'

Capt Nairac was abducted by the IRA during an undercover operation in a Dromintee pub in south Armagh in 1977.

The Disappeared were 16 people who were abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republicans.

Yesterday the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains appealed for people with information on Capt Nairac’s remains to come forward.

Chief investigator Geoff Knupfer made the appeal after the publication of a new book by retired Scottish diplomat Alistair Kerr – Betrayal: The Murder Of Robert Nairac GC.

Mr Knupfer said that of the four remaining Disappeared, they have least information on Capt Nairac.

What the Disappeared all have in common, he said, “is that they have grieving families who had to bear the additional terrible burden of years of not knowing where their loved one was buried”.

He added: “If the publication of this new book helps bring the case to public attention again then I hope those who know anything that can help us will contact the commission.”

Alan Black was the sole survivor of the IRA’s Kingsmills massacre, which he says was led by a man with an English accent.

“I never got hung up on Nairac,” he said.

“I just said that one of the soldiers had a clipped English accent. There are all sorts of rumours about what happened to him. But you could not hang your hat on any of them.”

Newry and Armagh UUP MLA Danny Kennedy agreed there has been much speculation about what the IRA did with Capt Nairac’s body.

“People want to know how republicans disposed of him and they should be honest at this late stage as to what they did. Only they know what they did with him.”

South Armagh victims’ campaigner Willie Frazer said: “The disappearance of Robert Nairac by the IRA was a war crime.”

Relatives of the eight IRA men shot by the SAS at Loughgall in 1987 are now asking why their loved ones were not arrested, he said.

“But they were terrorists – and they want to know why they were not arrested? Yet the IRA ‘arrested’ Nairac, murdered him and hid his body so his family could not grieve.

“Maybe they are ashamed of what they did to him.”