IRA yet to reveal locations of bodies

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN — The agony of the families of Northern Ireland’s so-called "disappeared" is set to continue as the IRA refuses to reveal the locations of the secret graves of nine people they admit they murdered until new British and Irish immunity laws are passed.

The IRA said in a March 30 statement that it had located the graves and the families had hoped they would soon be able to finally bury the recovered remains of their loved ones.

While it did not apologize for the killings, the IRA said it was sorry their investigations had taken so long and caused "prolonged anguish" to the families.

Just before the IRA announcement was made to news organizations in Belfast, a Department of Justice statement in Dublin said that the government would grant immunity from prosecution to people whose evidence helped recover the bodies and the British government was willing to do the same.

Now IRA sources are indicating that nothing further will be done until the Oireachtas and Westminster pass the immunity legislation.

The further delay is angering the relatives. Seamus McKendry, who runs Families of the Disappeared, said they have become "professional pessimists" in recent years.

"We are forever being told something is going to happen and nothing does happen," McKendry said. "But I think this present situation is the worst of all."

He said plans for the funeral, right down to details of flowers, occupied "every minute of our day."

A masked gang of eight men and four women abducted McKendry’s mother-in-law, Jean McConville, in front of her children just before Christmas in 1972. After Christmas, a man came to the door and gave her family her purse with her three rings inside it.

McConville was "executed" as an informer. She had been a Protestant but converted to Catholicism when she married. The family had originally lived in a predominantly Protestant area of Belfast but moved to the Catholic Divis Flats after loyalists forced them out at gun point in 1969.

When a soldier had been shot outside the flats, she had gone to his aid and put a pillow under his head. This had made her unpopular with some people.

Her husband had died of cancer a year before her abduction and she was bringing up her 10 children as a single mother when she was murdered.