Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc: We should seek to find the 'disappeared' of the War of Independence

Efforts are being made to find the remains of 17 people 'disappeared' in the Troubles. But the political heirs of the War of Independence have done little to find 60 people disappeared in the revolutionary era

The bodies of up to 60 people killed during the War of Independence may lay buried in unmarked graves in woodland, bogs, and fields around Ireland. Picture: iStock

After the Good Friday Agreement, the newly created Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR) was established to recover the bodies of the 17 victims of ‘The Troubles’ who had been ‘disappeared’ by the Provisional IRA and INLA but whose bodies were then still missing.

The phenomenon of what international Human Rights law calls ‘forced disappearances’ have been documented worldwide for decades.