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The Disappeared

Murdered by the IRA, the body of this British Army Captain has been missing for 40 years

Nairac was believed to have been undercover as an IRA member when he was killed.

robert nairac Captain Robert Nairac Wikicommons / Fair Use Wikicommons / Fair Use / Fair Use

AN APPEAL HAS been made for one of the disappeared about whose final resting place the least is known.

Robert Nairac, a Captain in the British Army, went missing in 1977 after he was abducted and murdered by the IRA.

He was last seen in south Armagh, where he had been working undercover, operating under the guise of being an Official IRA member.

To this day his abduction is shrouded in mystery, and speaking today Geoff Knupfer, the chief investigator with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), said that the case was the one they had the “least information to work from”.

On the hope of uncovering new information, Knupfer said:

The Disappeared came from a range of backgrounds but what they all have in common 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.

In the past two years the remains of three of the disappeared have surfaced following appeals for new information.

In September last year the bodies of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee were found in a bog in Meath.

Brendan Megraw was found in 2014, allowing him to be given a Christian burial ceremony.

This renewed appeal comes after the publication of ‘Betrayal: The Murder of Robert Nairac GC’ by Alistair Kerr, a book that looks at the detail of the case.

Read: “1980s Ireland was a different world” – the injustice in the search for missing woman Priscilla Clarke

Also: Family of murdered teenager in emotional appeal for information

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