Bogland search for IRA victim continues

A team of Gardaí is today involved in a third day of searching bogland near the border for teenager Columba McVeigh, one of Northern Ireland’s “disappeared“, kidnapped and murdered by the IRA nearly 30 years ago.

Mr McVeigh, from Donaghmore, Co Tyrone, was abducted in 1975 by the now on-ceasefire terrorists, who claimed he had operated as a spy.

A new search for his body began in a bog at Emyvale, Co Monaghan, on Monday, after the IRA relayed fresh information to Ireland’s Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.

Excavators have been involved in the operation, but so far it has proved fruitless.

The latest search for Mr McVeigh – aged 17 at the time of his abduction – got under way 10 days after what are thought to be the remains of another of the “disappeared”, Belfast woman Jean McConville, were found, reportedly by accident, on Shelling Hill beach in Co Louth.

Earlier searches of another beach in the same area for Mrs McConville had proved unsuccessful.

Mrs McConville, a mother of 10, was abducted from her Belfast home by an IRA gang in 1972.

She was accused by the terrorists of helping a British soldier who was killed during a gun battle with the IRA near Belfast’s Divis Flats complex.