The Disappearance Of Captain Nairac will be available on BBC iPlayer and BBC One Northern Ireland from Monday, November 10
An ex-IRA man has vowed to keep trying to help locate the remains of Disappeared soldier Robert Nairac.
Martin McAllister described the situation as an “opening running sore” in south Armagh where the Grenadier Guards captain was last seen alive in 1977.
Information he secured led to the first official search for his remains last year by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR).
Capt Nairac is considered to be part of a group known as the Disappeared, who were killed and secretly buried by paramilitary groups.
The search for his remains in Co Louth ended without success last October.
A new BBC film, The Disappearance Of Captain Nairac hears of his love of Ireland from his friends, from colleagues who saw him as unconventional and locals in south Armagh who nicknamed him “Danny Boy”.
It hears that Capt Nairac had walked into the Three Steps Bar in Drumintee on the night of Saturday May 14 1977, undercover, dressed in a donkey jacket and jeans, hoping for a breakthrough in the intelligence war against the IRA.
Those in the bar remember him drawing attention to himself, saying he had lost his cigarettes and also asking for advice on routes across the border without army checkpoints.
He maintained he was a republican from Belfast called Danny McErlean and sang two rebel songs.
However, a group of local men are understood to have become suspicious, overpowered him in the car park, took him across the border and shot him.
The programme heard an account of a man in the car who said they called the local IRA Officer Commander, who arrived drunk, and told them to shoot Capt Nairac.
He said he pretended to be a priest to try and elicit a confession, but then withdrew, adding he heard shots fired as he walked away.
He went on to say he hopes some day Capt Nairac’s body will be given to his sisters, and wanted to sympathise for the part he played.
Former local councillor Seamus Murphy recalled Capt Nairac as having stood out, greeting people in Irish in Crossmaglen and showing off a knowledge of Irish history.
“He had a certain swagger and arrogance about him, and an awful habit of putting his gun down and walking away from it which everyone thought was strange,” he said.
“Everyone knew he wasn’t an ordinary soldier, but they thought he was a roaring idiot, and probably dangerous.”
He also said he saw him in “full undercover mode” once at the cattle mart in Newry, dressed as a farmer and pretending to be a bit drunk.
However, an anonymous former army intelligence officer described Capt Nairac’s role in an area known as the IRA’s greatest stronghold, where soldiers had to be brought in and out by helicopter, as “absolutely imperative”, being out on the ground, talking to people and identifying potential agents.
Capt Nairac’s biographer Alistair Kerr said he was said to have believed he was on the verge of an intelligence break through recruiting someone with serious links to the IRA on the night he disappeared.
A former RUC intelligence officer said he had a “touch of 007 about him” and took risks he would never take.
He said he believed Capt Nairac went to the pub that night as he cultivated a friendship with a woman who was very close to an IRA figure, and hoped to gain information through her about her relatives.
Capt Nairac’s friend Jemima Parry-Jones said he loved Ireland and was passionate about the Troubles not going on.
“He wanted to be a part of stopping it … which meant he took risks,” she said.
Mr McAllister said he has always been fascinated by the Nairac story, describing “a open running sore in this area”.
He said he was in prison at the time of the abduction, but said he has learned those who abducted Capt Nairac were IRA sympathisers, not members, and all “scarpered” after, adding they had nothing to do with the burial.
Rumours were circulated about Capt Nairac following his disappearance, adding to the confusion.
Mr McAllister said in the decades since “every imaginable horror has been laid at his door”, with claims he was involved in atrocities such as the Miami Showband killings, the Kingsmill Massacre and the Dublin Monaghan bombings.
“It just becomes a figure of speech with no proof,” he said.
Mr McAllister described speaking to lots of people to put together a jigsaw puzzle of what happened.
He said, while people are “shy” about giving information, they will give it to him.
“It’s been on my mind constantly because it’s an open running sore in this area,” he said.
“This man was a soldier, and I was his enemy, but to disappear somebody is something I never ever agreed with. No one should be left in such a position whereby they haven’t a grave to visit. This man should be back with his family.”
He has pledged that he will not give up on his search, describing it as a “matter of honour”.
The Disappearance Of Captain Nairac will be available on BBC iPlayer and BBC One Northern Ireland from Monday November 10 at 10.40pm.
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