'Disappeared' victim to be laid to rest beside parents

One of the IRA’s “Disappeared” victims will be laid to rest beside his parents today, 36 years after he was abducted and murdered.

The family of Brendan Megraw will get the chance to pay their last respects at a requiem Mass in his home city of Belfast – something denied them for more than three decades – before he is buried alongside his mother Brigid and father Robert in the nearby village of Glenavy.

The funeral is being held six weeks after the 23-year-old’s remains were found in a remote bog at Oristown in rural Co Meath.

The newlywed was snatched by the IRA from his home in the Twinbrook area of west Belfast in April 1978.

He was awaiting the birth of a daughter when he was dragged away by members of the paramilitary group and killed.

His remains were returned to his brother Kieran’s house in west Belfast on Wednesday.

The funeral service will be held at St Oliver Plunkett’s church before burial at St Joseph’s graveyard in Glenavy.

Mr Megraw was found through the efforts of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.

The commission, set up by the British and Irish governments in the wake of the Good Friday peace agreement, was tasked with investigating the cases of 16 people killed and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles.

Six victims are still to be found.

Last week, the commission announced that preliminary searches for another victim had started close to the same rural bog where Mr Megraw was found.

Specialist forensic investigators were scanning sections of land in the locality of the Oristown bog with radar for the remains of former west Belfast monk Joe Lynskey.

Mr Lynskey went missing in 1972 but it was only in 2010 when the IRA admitted to killing and secretly burying him.

It is suspected two more of the disappeared, Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright, are buried in moorland a few miles from the Oristown bog in an area near Wilkinstown, Co Meath.

All information passed to the commission is confidential and cannot be used in criminal prosecutions.