Search goes on for last of N. Ireland's 'disappeared'

In remote bogland in Ireland, investigators search the ground with radar and a cadaver dog for a victim of the IRA murdered and secretly buried in 1972.

They mark out grid areas and put down probes at half-meter intervals for the dog to sniff on a grim mission to find the last of the "disappeared".

"We're not just looking for the needle in the haystack. We're actually looking for the haystack before we start," lead investigator Geoff Knupfer said on-site near Wilkinstown.

Many of the people taking part in the search are former police officers like Knupfer, a retired detective. Their painstaking work is for a unique agency set up as part of the Northern Ireland peace process that acts on anonymous tipoffs from informants.

"We're trying to bring closure to families who are in a terrible mess because their loved ones just literally disappeared off the face of the earth," Knupfer said.

Their latest search is for the body of Joe Lynskey, one of the 16 people abducted by paramilitaries, during a three-decades long conflict known here as "The Troubles". Six of the victims have still not been found.

Shortly after a historic peace agreement in 1998, the Independent Commission for the Investigation of Victims Remains was established.

The search for Lynskey comes two months after the commission found another victim, Brendan Megraw, in nearby bog land after 36 years.

"You don't wake up with a sense of wondering where he is anymore," Brendan's brother Kieran said after Megraw was finally laid to rest beside his parents.

Lynskey and another two victims are believed to be buried in the same area where Megraw was found in the Republic of Ireland.

The legislation that underpins the commission's work, enacted in both Britain and Ireland, is unprecedented. Informants cannot be identified, and no evidence discovered can be used in court.

"Nobody has been prosecuted, arrested or in any way convicted as a result of information passed to the commission," Knupfer said.

On the bog land search, Mick Swindells of Search Dogs UK plotted out an area, with his body-detection dog, Ronnie, waiting patiently.

"These kinds of searches are very difficult because of the age of the body," the retired police dog handler said.

'Just want him home'

The peace process has encouraged people to come forward with information that can assist in solving the remaining mysteries from a conflict in which 3,000 people died.

Of the 16 victims under the commission's remit, the IRA claimed responsibility for killing 13.

One was killed by the Irish National Liberation Army, and no attribution has been given for the two other victims.

Lynskey, a former Cistercian monk and IRA volunteer, was killed by his fellow militants after a summary trial for breaking the group's rules.

Maria Lynskey, his niece, said her family only found out four years ago that he was one of the "disappeared" as they were given false information that he had emigrated to the United States.

"I just want him home," she said. "I just want him back with his mother."

(China Daily 12/13/2014 page10)