The family of a County Tyrone man who disappeared 40 years ago have made an appeal to the IRA for further information on where he is buried.
Columba McVeigh was kidnapped, killed and buried in secret by the group after being accused of working as an informer for the security forces in 1975.
He was one of 16 known as “the disappeared” who vanished in Northern Ireland after being abducted mainly by IRA internal security squads during the Troubles.
His family believe he is buried in Bragan Bog in County Monaghan in the Irish Republic.
Despite extensive searches by the organisation set up to find the disappeared, the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLV), the body of McVeigh, from Dungannon, has never been recovered.
His sister, Dymphna Kerr, said on Friday that the 40th anniversary of his disappearance was particularly painful. “All we can do is pray that some day we’ll get him back, and plead with anyone who has information to help bring an end to this nightmare,” she said.
McVeigh’s brother, Oliver, said: “Is 40 years not long enough to punish a family? Someone has the information that can end this inhumanity at absolutely no risk to themselves.”
Under the terms of the ICLV’s formation in 1999, no one will face prosecution for providing intelligence that could help locate the remains of the disappeared.
McVeigh is among four of the 16 still missing presumed dead. The others include the former monk turned IRA man Joe Lynskey, who was killed by his own comrades in 1972, as well as the SAS captain Robert Nairac, who was abducted, murdered and buried in secret in South Armagh five years later. The remaining missing victim is the only one not killed by the Provisional IRA.
The former school teacher Seamus Ruddy’s remains have never been found, despite the admission by a faction of the Irish National Liberation Army that it murdered the Newry man in Paris in 1985.
Ruddy was kidnapped, tortured, murdered and his remains hidden in France by a rival INLA group that wanted him to hand over an arms smuggling network to them. His disappearance was one of the key causes of the internal INLA feud of 1987, which tore the republican socialist paramilitary group apart as Ruddy’s friends sought revenge for his death.
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