Families demand IRA help find bodies

THE IRA faced a fresh plea yesterday to help locate the bodies of people missing since the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Following the discovery last Tuesday of a skeleton believed to be that of missing west Belfast woman Jean McConville, her son Michael called of the Provisionals to provide more precise information about the location of graves of other people abducted, killed and buried by the organisation.

As DNA tests continued on the remains found last week in Shelling Beach, near Carlingford in Co Louth, Mr McConville insisted other families needed fresh information so they could give their relatives a Christian burial.

"There are nine bodies which people know about which the IRA has just dumped all over the countryside just like waste," he said.

"These families need a Christian burial. There are two families in particular the Armstrong family and the Evans family and no one has even had the decency of turning around and saying that they have murdered these people and whether they have buried them or not.

"Mrs Armstrong and Mrs Evans are going through sheer hell. The other families know that the IRA has claimed that they've killed them and given a sort of rough idea of where their bodies are buried but the Armstrong family and the Evans family know nothing whatsoever.

"They are worse off than the rest of us," he said.

Mrs McConville has been missing since 1972 when she was abducted from her west Belfast home. The 37-year-old mother of 10 is believed to have offended Republicans by tending to a fatally wounded British soldier outside her front door.

After the discovery of the skeleton last week, sources said the victim appeared to have a bullet wound to the skull.

The McConville family have said they believe the skeleton is their mother.

In 1999, the IRA supplied information to a commission set up by the British and Irish governments about the whereabouts of nine victims' bodies. So far three have been located.

The body of Eamonn Molloy was left in a coffin in a Co Louth graveyard.

The bodies of Brian McKinney and John McClory were found after weeks of digging in bog land in Co Monaghan.

The Provisionals were unable to provide precise details on the location of five other members of the disappeared.

Mr McConville yesterday appealed for information about missing father-of-five Charlie Armstrong from Crossmaglen in South Armagh and Gerald Evans, who also went missing from the village in 1979.

Mr Armstrong disappeared in August 1981 after driving an elderly woman to mass in the local Catholic church.

Gerald Evans disappeared in March 1979 from Crossmaglen.

Neither name appeared on a list of missing people given by the IRA in 1999.