A KNOCK at the door one spring night filled Margaret McKinney with fear. This was Belfast, May 1978, the height of the Troubles, and the unexpected visitor was a workmate of her son. "He arrived with Brian's pay packet and told us he hadn't turned up
for work," she says. "I just had this awful sense of dread." Her fears were well founded. Brian McKinney had been abducted by the IRA on his way to work, in retaliation for a robbery he'd carried out on a club run by the paramilitaries.
It is nearly 30 years to the day since the 22-year-old was taken. Brian, the second of four children, suffered from chronic asthma, and at the age of 14 was diagnosed as having the mental abilities of a six-year-old.
He is one of the so-called Disappeared – at least nine people murdered and clandestinely buried by the IRA during nearly three decades of sectarian conflict. As the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement approaches, some relatives have still not recovered their loved ones' remains.
So, while Northern Ireland moves on from its dark past, there is still no closure for some. Of the nine people the IRA finally admitted in 1999 to executing, only four bodies have been recovered. As well as the five unaccounted for, six more people are thought to have been murdered by republican paramilitary groups, but no one has yet admitted to involvement in their deaths.
Members of the forensics team drafted in to assist in the search for IRA victims have also worked on the disappearance of Lisa Dorrian, whose body has never been found. The 25-year-old Bangor woman is believed to have been a victim of loyalist terrorists in 2005 – but 'disappearing' victims is largely a republican phenomenon.
And so the torment continues. Brian was abducted on the same morning as John McClory, his friend and accomplice in the robbery. A few days earlier, Margaret had repaid her son's share of the money to the IRA and apologised after he admitted the theft. In fact, Brian had been picked up by the paramilitaries and interrogated a week before. "When he didn't come home that night we were out of our minds with worry," she says. In the immediate aftermath there were rumours he had been sent out of the country, but eventually the family was told the IRA did not have him. Nothing else was forthcoming from the provos except threats. The intimidation was awful, says Margaret, and her family was warned not to speak to anyone about Brian's disappearance, particularly the police, which would have been out of the question anyway in the nationalist area of Andersonstown in which they lived.
So the McKinneys struggled on in silence. After a few weeks Margaret says she was certain her son was dead, and by the first anniversary of his abduction she had suffered a stress-related heart attack. She had also lost her faith in God and would happily have avenged her son's disappearance. "There were times when I'd have shot the children of those responsible if I'd had the chance," she says.
It was 21 years before she heard the truth of her son's fate at the hands of republican gunmen. Now she is backing a campaign to help end the anguish of the other bereaved families. "I went to the darkest corner of hell so, believe me, I know how they suffer," she says.
GERRY ADAMS has always denied having anything to do with the fate of the Disappeared, or being a member of the IRA. But in 2002, Ed Moloney, a former Irish Journalist of the Year, wrote a book in which he accused the Sinn Fein president of being at the heart of one of the most shameful chapters of the republicans' killing campaign. In A Secret History of the IRA, he alleged Adams set up a special unit, answerable to himself as a senior Belfast commander, to enable paramilitaries to dispose of those it did not want to admit killing. Some were suspected informers; others, such as Brian McKinney and John McClory, had fallen foul of the IRA for various other reasons. While happy to take responsibility for attacks on unionists and British soldiers, the IRA feared acknowledging these murders would undermine its support because the victims were mainly nationalists and, in some cases, disclosing they were informers would have embarrassed the organisation.
Until 1972, the IRA had a policy of shooting informers dead and leaving their bodies by the roadside as a very public warning to others who might be tempted down the same path. Moloney claimed a new approach was adopted after what became infamous as the Four Square Laundry affair. Under interrogation, Seamus Wright, an IRA man, admitted he and fellow volunteer Kevin McKee were working as double agents for the British. One spying method revealed was the Four Square Laundry, a van that toured west Belfast's housing estates offering a discount washing service. Clothes handed in for cleaning were tested for traces of explosives and gunpowder, while a soldier in the van's false roof photographed suspects.
In October 1972 the IRA ambushed the van, shooting dead the driver and spraying the roof space with gunfire. The IRA court-martialled Seamus and Kevin for their roles but, because they were both from influential republican families and the paramilitaries did not want people to know the extent to which Four Square Laundry had penetrated its operations, an unprecedented decision was taken. The men were held for six weeks before being killed. This was the beginning of the Unknowns, two secret cells allegedly set up to carry out special operations, one in west Belfast, the other in the north of the city. And so people began to disappear.
BRENDAN MEGRAW was kidnapped 47 days before Brian McKinney and John McClory. He was taken on April 8, 1978, after a group of men forced their way into his home in Twinbrook, Belfast. They drugged his pregnant girlfriend, waited for him to return, then abducted him. It was the last time his partner saw him alive. "Brendan lived for his motorbike, the races at Kirkstown," his younger brother, Kieran, says. "His pet hates were football and politics."
I meet Kieran at the WAVE Trauma Centre in Belfast, a cross-community organisation that supports people affected by the Troubles. The actor James Nesbitt is a patron and has frequently spoken out to urge those who know where the bodies of murder victims are to give up the information.
Kieran is standing beside a 6ft-tall board showing a black-and-white photograph of his brother. The resemblance between the two is striking. Brendan was 18 when he vanished. One theory, Kieran offers, is that he had riled the IRA by giving a statement to the police about a shooting involving the British army. But for 21 years the provisionals denied any involvement in the abduction. Then, at Easter 1999, Kieran received a phone call summoning him to a meeting. He was told to come alone. He was met by two men who identified themselves as members of the IRA. They told him they had abducted his brother and shot him. They added that a statement would be released providing a reason for Brendan's killing and detailing where the body was buried. Shortly afterwards, the IRA announced its list of victims to the world. Brendan had been an "agent provocateur", it claimed, so a bullet was put in his head. "That was all we were told," says Kieran.
The confirmation of a grim truth many had suspected for years gave the families of the Disappeared some hope, as it meant a search could finally begin for the bodies. With official IRA involvement, the families fully expected the remains of their loved ones would be found within 24 hours; the Megraws believed they could finally lay Brendan to rest. When the digging started in earnest, Kieran and his family sat by the phone. "We all felt it would only be a matter of hours, or at worst days," he says. Three of the Disappeared were found after a few weeks, but the call never came for the Megraw family. They are still waiting.
KEVIN McKEE'S name was also on the IRA's murder list. Unlike McKinney or Megraw, the tall, athletic youth who vanished on October 2, 1972, was a member of the IRA, from a Belfast family with known links to the paramilitaries. Indeed, his uncle had been a founding member of the IRA. "We were a family with a big republican tradition – although I'm not," says Kevin's sister Marie, who was 13 when her brother disappeared.
When the IRA admitted to shooting Kevin in 1999, it said the Andersonstown teenager had become a member of the Military Reaction Force, recruited by British military intelligence, along with Seamus Wright, to spy on paramilitary activities. Marie acknowledges some people will have little sympathy for Kevin, but whatever he did, right or wrong, he was a loving brother and son. "He was only 17, a teenager who knew no better. He was engaged and wanted to study art. But it was the 1970s and lots of young men were drawn to groups like the IRA and the UDA for different reasons. We had no idea he was involved," she says.
After their exposure as double agents, Kevin and Seamus were abducted, imprisoned and then executed. "My brother was shot in the head," Marie says.
"They say a priest was called to give him and Seamus the last rites," her sister Philomena adds.
But Marie is not convinced. "Do you think a priest could have watched that? Do you think the IRA would have allowed a priest to be there?" Her anger is palpable. It was 21 years before she found out her brother was a member of the IRA, despite family affiliations to the organisation. At least two of her relatives knew what had happened but neither said a word, not even to Kevin's mother, Mary. Marie found out the truth from the newspapers. "It devastated us and drove my mother to madness," she says.
Mary had been unable to cope not knowing what had happened to her first-born, nor being able to bury him. "It destroyed our family," says Marie. "It drove my mother mad. She became an alcoholic and tried to commit suicide. She has been in and out of institutions ever since." Mary, now 75, is in a psychiatric unit in Belfast. She has never accepted her son's death and still asks for him. "If they recovered the body and she was finally able to see his grave, maybe then she could have some peace."
THE Disappeared came back to haunt the IRA during the peace process. The death of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, who disappeared in 1972 after going to help a British soldier who lay fatally wounded outside her home in west Belfast, caused particular outrage. In its 1999 statement, the IRA admitted killing her but insisted she was an informant. Her children have always denied this, however, and during pre-Good Friday Agreement talks involving Sinn Fein and Bill Clinton, they lobbied the US president, who in turn pressed Gerry Adams to help recover Jean McConville's body.
Margaret McKinney also visited the White House and says President Clinton assured her he would do everything he could to locate her son's body. "He took my hand and promised to find Brian," she says. Shortly afterwards, Gerry Adams visited her at home, even though he had always taken great pains to distance himself from the Disappeared, and promised he would help find her son's body.
On March 29, 1999, one year after the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA finally admitted to killing nine of the Disappeared. Furthermore, as part of the peace process, the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) was established to find the bodies, including other 'disappeared' people no one has ever admitted to murdering.
On the morning of May 28, 1999, the day the ICLVR officially came into being, the remains of Eamon Molloy were found in a graveyard in Faughart, County Louth. A few weeks later, the bodies of Brian McKinney and John McClory were recovered. To date, these are the only remains to have been found as a result of information provided by the IRA. Jean McConville's remains were discovered on Shelling Hill beach in County Louth in 2003, despite IRA information suggesting nearby Templeton beach as the location.
The ICLVR says more than 85,000 square metres of land have been excavated in the search for bodies, and a team of forensic experts continues to carry out surveys at a number of sites. Landscapes change and memories fade, but both the British and Irish governments remain committed to finding all the victims. As do their families.
Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams are also determined to work with the ICLVR and say relatives of those secretly buried suffered a "grievous injustice". "We are continuing to do all we can to right this terrible wrong," says a spokesman for Sinn Fein. "We have called on anyone with any information to come forward and assist the families."
But for some of the bereaved, apologies mean nothing. In 2006, the IRA again insisted that Jean McConville had been an informer, despite Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman reporting that a three-year investigation showed no evidence of this. Relatives of the murdered woman said the statement was perpetuating a lie and compounding her children's grief.
Time has been a healer for Kieran Megraw, but he still gets angry. He wants Brendan's body back, and he hopes someone, somewhere will have that vital piece of information that will lead to a breakthrough.
Marie McKee remains angry because of what has happened to her mother and because of the effect events have had on her own life. Philomena remembers the day the bodies of Brian McKinney and John McClory were found, and says she watched the news with tears running down her face. Both live in hope that one day they will be able to visit their brother's grave.
Brian McKinney is buried in Milltown Cemetery on the Falls Road. He was finally laid to rest on September 4, 1999, two decades after he disappeared. His headstone is 100 yards from where his friend John McClory is buried. "They were found with their wrists bound. Brian had been shot in the head. It breaks my heart that he knew he was going to die," says Margaret. "I know this sounds crazy but I was actually grateful to the IRA when they found his body… I can forgive now that I have my peace." r
There is a confidential telephone number and address for anyone with information about the Disappeared. Call 00800 55585500, speak to Sandra Peake of WAVE on 028 9077 922, or write to ICLVR, PO Box 10827, Dublin 2, Ireland.
THE MISSINGThe nine victims named by the IRA on March 29, 1999 were:
Seamus Wright An IRA member accused of being a British army agent and member of the Military Reaction Force (MRF). He was court-martialled by the IRA in 1972.
Kevin McKee An IRA member and alleged army agent and member of the MRF. Court-martialled by the IRA in 1972.
Eamon Molloy An IRA member and thought to be an RUC informer. He was court-martialled in 1975.
Jean McConville A mother of ten who allegedly confessed to being an army informer in 1972.
Columba McVeigh A civilian accused of being an army agent who had infiltrated the IRA. Disappeared in 1975.
Brendan Megraw A civilian who allegedly confessed to being a British agent provocateur and MRF member in 1978.
John McClory Civilian who allegedly admitted stealing money from the IRA. He disappeared in 1978.
Brian McKinney Killed with McClory for the same offence.
Danny McIlhone Said to have stolen IRA weapons in 1981.
The following were not named on the IRA list but they are thought to have died at the hands of the paramilitaries:
Seamus Ruddy A member of the INLA who moved to Paris in the early 1980s. He was killed in France in 1985.
Captain Robert Nairac An SAS man killed after an undercover mission to a South Armagh pub in 1977.
Gerry Evans Vanished in 1979 after a night out dancing.
Charlie Armstrong Abducted on his way to Mass one morning in 1981. His body was never recovered.
Eugene Simons Vanished on January 1, 1981. His body was recovered by accident three years later in a bog in Dundalk.
Gareth O'Connor Disappeared in Dundalk in 2003. His body was recovered in Victoria Quay, Newry, in 2005.
The Troubles – a timelineBetween 1966 and 1999 some 3,636 people were killed and 36,000 others were injured as a result of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
1968–69 Catholics protest against discrimination in voting rights, housing and unemployment.
In December 1969 the Irish Republican Army splits into the Official IRA and the hardline Provisionals. Britain sends in troops.
1972 After a civil-rights march, British soldiers shoot dead 14 Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry on January 30 – 'Bloody Sunday'.
1973–74 A coalition government is formed but collapses after a Protestant strike and controversy over power-sharing issues. Direct rule resumes.
1981 Bobby Sands, an IRA member, begins a hunger strike in Belfast's Maze Prison, demanding recognition as a political prisoner rather than an ordinary criminal. He dies after 66 days of fasting; nine other hunger strikers die.
1983 Gerry Adams becomes president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.
1985 The United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gives the Irish Republic a consultative role on behalf of Catholics in some matters concerning Northern Ireland.
1988 On March 6, three unarmed IRA members are killed in Gibraltar, setting off two weeks of violence in Ulster. At their funeral, a loyalist gunman, Michael Stone, opens fire and throws grenades at mourners, killing three and wounding 50. A few days later, at the funeral procession of one of the three victims, two British soldiers drive near the cortège and are beaten and fatally shot by a mob.
1991 Rival Catholic and Protestant political parties begin talks, the first time they have met since the mid-1970s.
1993 John Major, the British PM, and his Irish counterpart Albert Reynolds issue the Downing Street Declaration, a peace initiative aimed at reaching a settlement in Northern Ireland.
1994 January: The United States grants a visa to Gerry Adams – having denied requests over the past 11 years because of his ties to terrorism – so he can speak at a foreign policy meeting. The move signals the Clinton administration's belief that Adams is working towards peace.
September: Initiatives by the UK and Irish governments lead to ceasefires by both the IRA and, later, the Protestant Unionist militia groups.
1995 February: Britain and Ireland announce a peace plan for Northern Ireland.
1996 January: An international commission led by a former US senator George Mitchell offers compromises to resolve the stalemate plaguing the peace talks.
February: The IRA declares an end to its ceasefire and bombs London's largest office and apartment development, Docklands.
1997 The IRA renews its ceasefire; Sinn Fein formally renounces violence and says it is committed to "exclusively peaceful means" to end the conflict, opening the way for its participation in multi-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland.
1998 April 10: The Good Friday Agreement is signed by all the main political parties.
August 15: Terrorists detonate a car bomb amid a throng of shoppers in the town of Omagh, killing 28 people and injuring more than 200 others. It is the worst incident of sectarian violence in 30 years.
October: Catholic politician John Hume and Protestant leader David Trimble win the Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward the Northern Ireland peace agreement.
KEY PLAYERS IN WAR AND PEACEGerry Adams Leader of the Republican movement and an alleged former commander in the IRA. He is now president of Sinn Fein.
Tony BlairBreathed new life into the peace process when he became prime minister in 1997 Currently a Middle East envoy for the UN, EU, US and Russia.
Bill ClintonThe former US president was pivotal in pushing the peace process forward during the 1990s. First visited Northern Ireland in November 1995, when tens of thousands of people turned out to welcome him.
John HumeThe former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his efforts to secure peace in Northern Ireland. He is also a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award, the only recipient of the three major peace awards. He retired in 2004.
John MajorOpened up talks with the Provisional IRA when he became prime minister and is credited with paving the way for the Good Friday Agreement, although it was signed after he left office.
Martin McGuinnessThe former IRA commander went from the riots of the Bogside during the 1970s to the very heart of government, having become one of Sinn Fein's two ministers in the first power-sharing deal. He was Sinn Fein's chief negotiator in the Good Friday Agreement talks. Along with Gerry Adams, he remains the movement's main public face.
George MitchellA former US senator who first led a commission that established the principles of non-violence to which all parties in Northern Ireland had to adhere. He subsequently chaired the all-party peace negotiations which led to the Belfast Peace Agreement. Was awarded the Liberty Medal in 1998.
Ian PaisleyVeteran politician and church leader who founded the Democratic Unionist Party and was famous for saying no. He recently stepped down both as the leader of the party which he created, the DUP, and from the post he had always coveted, that of First Minister of Northern Ireland.
David TrimbleServed as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and as the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume.
Albert ReynoldsThe former Taoiseach was credited with pushing the peace process through negotiations with John Major.
Michael StoneLoyalist paramilitary, infamous for opening fire at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast during the funeral of three members of the IRA who had been shot by the British army in Gibraltar.
Billy WrightMember of the UVF and leader of the extremist LVF. He was assassinated in the Maze Prison by the INLA in 1997.
Bobby SandsAn IRA volunteer and British MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone who died aged 27 on hunger strike in the Maze Prison.
Patrick Magee A former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), best known for planting a bomb in Brighton's Grand Hotel, targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Two men and three women died. Magee was released from prison in 1999, some 14 years into his sentence, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
