'All sides in The Troubles and the War of Independence were guilty of disappearing people'

 The soldiers concealed evidence by burying six of their victims in cellars or in gardens.

During the War of Independence (1919-21), the RIC ‘disappeared’ seven people, including brothers Patrick and Harry Loughnane, two IRA volunteers whose bodies were discovered mutilated in a remote pond.

Another of the RIC’s victims was Thomas Hodgett, a postmaster who was ‘disappeared’ in Kells, County Meath, in June 1921, after he had fallen foul of the local RIC district inspector. His bullet-riddled body was discovered in the Boyne two weeks later.

Although the War of Independence formally ended with the truce of July 1921, the killings and disappearances continued. IRA Volunteer Thomas John Gallagher, from Trillick, Co Tyrone, was abducted by B Specials in June 1922 and was never seen again. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) initially claimed that he had gone ‘on the run’.

However, the police later conceded that Gallagher had likely been killed as a reprisal for the murders of two B Specials by the IRA.

Gallagher’s IRA comrades alleged that he had been ‘taken from his bed and, after being tortured … was thrown into a limekiln and cremated alive’.

Andrew Smith, a Catholic farmhand in Rathmore, Co Antrim, disappeared about the same time, after receiving letters making sectarian threats against him.

The press reported that Smith had become “another victim of anti-Catholic hate”. At the signing of the Belfast agreement in 1998, it was revealed that Republican paramilitaries had ‘disappeared’ 16 people during ‘The Troubles’. 

In fact, at least 26 people were ‘disappeared’ during the Troubles by loyalists and by members of the British security forces, as well as by Republicans. However, many of these bodies had been recovered before the agreement. 

Amongst these were Andrew Murray, a victim of the so-called Pitchfork Murders in Fermanagh. In 1972, Murray was murdered by British soldiers, who attempted to hide his body in a marsh. The following year, German industrialist Thomas Niedermayer was killed by members of the Provisional IRA. His body was discovered by the RUC in a shallow grave.

The Provisional-IRA’s ‘disappearance’ of Patrick Duffy, a suspected spy for the RUC’s Special Branch, proved so controversial that they were forced to return his body a few weeks later.

During a feud in the loyalist community in 1975, the UVF ‘disappeared’ two members of the east Belfast UDA: Hugh McVeigh and David Douglas. Their bodies were recovered from a secret grave near Islandmagee.

A year later, Samuel Millar, a 71-year-old farmer from Draperstown, County Derry, was murdered by a British soldier serving in the UDR, because Millar was about to give evidence in the court case of that soldier and several members of the UDA who had robbed Castledawson post office. Millar’s body was tied to a concrete post and submerged in a quarry of water.

The remains of Eugene Simons, a plumber from Down, were discovered south of the border in 1984. He appears to have been executed by the IRA five years earlier, as a suspected British spy.

About the same time, Sean Murphy, a postman from south Armagh, was disappeared by Republican paramilitaries. His body found inside his car at the bottom of Dundalk Bay.

In 1982, James Galway, a barman from west Belfast, was killed by Lenny Murphy, leader of the infamous UVF gang ‘The Shankill Butchers’. Galway’s body was buried in Broughshane, County Antrim, where it was discovered a year later.

Loyalist paramilitaries involved in a paedophile ring that abused boys at the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast are suspected of the murder and ‘disappearance’ of five local boys. The remains of only one of their suspected victims, Brian McDermott, were recovered.