Candidates shortlisted for IRA victim search
The Irish and British governments are looking at a number of candidates to appoint a forensic expert to help locate the bodies of people abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain confirmed today.
Mr Hain said the field of candidates included experts with experience in locating bodies in Bosnia and also those involved in murder cases in England.
He said: “We have been making progress on this crucial issue which was raised with me by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness a few weeks ago.
“I have discussed this with the Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell and we agreed on a new way forward, appointing an expert with forensic and archaeology experience.
“We could either appoint a forensic expert from Bosnia who has been involved in the identification of people buried in mass graves or we can go to England where we are looking at a number of people, including a forensic scientist involved in the hunt for the remains of victims of the Moors murders.”
Mr Hain said it would still be some weeks before an appointment could be made and the governments would consult with the families of the disappeared in Northern Ireland who had yet to locate their loved ones’ remains.
So far the remains of only four of the nine people the IRA has admitted to abducting, murdering and burying have been recovered.
They were:
:: Eamonn Molloy from north Belfast, who went missing in 1975 and whose body was recovered in a coffin in an old graveyard in Faughart, Co Louth, in May 1999;
:: John McClory, aged 18, and Brian McKinney, 22, from west Belfast, who disappeared in May 1978 and whose remains were discovered in marshlands in Cloghagh, Co Monaghan;
:: Jean McConville, a 37-year-old Belfast mother of 10 who was abducted in December 1972 for treating a wounded soldier outside her home and whose remains were found in August 2003 by a man out walking with his children at Shelling Hill Beach in Co Louth after two unsuccessful digs in the area.
The Commission for the Recovery of Victims’ Remains has failed to uncover:
:: Columba McVeigh, 17, from Donaghmore in Co Tyrone, who was kidnapped in October 1975 and whose body is believed to be buried in bogland in Bragan, near Emyvale, in Co Monaghan;
:: Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright, both 25, who went missing from the Anderstown area of west Belfast in October 1972 and who the IRA claimed were buried at Coghallstown, near Navan in Co Meath;
:: Danny McIlhone, from west Belfast, who went missing in July 1981 and whose body is believed to be concealed at a site in Ballynultagh in Co Wicklow;
:: Twenty-four-year-old Brendan Megraw from Twinbrook, on the outskirts of Belfast, who was abducted in April 1978 and is believed to be buried at Oristown, near Kells in Co Meath.
