Man charged over 1977 IRA killing

Last Modified: 21 May 2008
Source: ITN

A man has been charged with kidnapping an undercover British soldier who was shot dead by the IRA.

Captain Robert Nairac, 29, was working undercover in South Armagh in 1977 when he disappeared.

It emerged he had been captured by the IRA, interrogated and shot, though his body was never recovered.

Kevin Crilly, 57, will appear at Newry Magistrates' Court on Thursday charged with the kidnapping and false imprisonment of Captain Nairac.

Crilly was arrested on Tuesday at an address in the village of Jonesborough in South Armagh.

Captain Nairac was kidnapped by an IRA gang in the car park of the Three Steps Inn pub in Dromintee while working undercover for an army unit known as 14 Intelligence Company.

He told customers he was a republican from Ardoyne, north Belfast, but their suspicions were aroused when he asked a girl how he could cross the Irish border without being detected.

Outside the bar he was grabbed by his abductors and driven across the border into the Irish Republic, where he was brutally beaten and interrogated for several hours.

Before he was shot, one of the gang posed as a priest in an attempt to coax the officer, a practising Catholic, into making a confession.

One of the three men later convicted of the murder admitted to investigating police: "I shot the British captain. He never told us anything."

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