Criminal Prosecutions
In November 1977, Liam Townson, a 24-year-old PIRA member from the village of Meigh outside Newry, was convicted of Nairac's murder. Townson was the son of an Englishman who had married a Meath woman. He confessed to killing Nairac and implicated other members of the unit involved. Townson made two admissible confessions to Garda officers. The first was made around the time of his arrest, it started with "I shot the British captain. He never told us anything. He was a great soldier." The second statement was made at Dundalk police station after Townson had consulted a solicitor. He had become hysterical and distressed and screamed a confession to the officer in charge of the investigation.
Townson was convicted in Dublin's Special Criminal Court of Nairac's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Townson served 13 years in prison and was released in 1990. He was part of Conor Murphy's 1998 election campaign team and as of 2000 he was living in St. Moninna Park, in Meigh.
In 1978, the RUC arrested five men from the South Armagh area. Three of them - Gerard Fearon, 21, Thomas Morgan, 18, and Daniel O'Rourke, 33 -were charged with Nairac's murder. Michael McCoy, 20, was charged with kidnapping, and Owen Rocks, 22, was accused of withholding information. Fearon and Morgan were convicted of Nairac's murder. O'Rourke was acquitted but found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for ten years. McCoy was jailed for five years and Rocks for two. Morgan died in a road accident in 1987, a year after his release. O'Rourke became a prominent Sinn Féin member in Drumintee.
Two other men, Terry McCormick and Pat Maguire, wanted in connection with this incident remain on the run. Maguire has been reported as living in New Jersey in the US.
On 20 May 2008, 57-year-old IRA veteran Kevin Crilly of Jonesborough, County Armagh was arrested at his home by officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). He had been on the run in the United States but had returned to Northern Ireland under an alias after the 1998 Belfast Agreement. He was charged the following day with the kidnapping and false imprisonment of Nairac. In November 2009, Crilly was also charged with the murder of Robert Nairac at Newry magistrates' court during a bail hearing on the two counts on which he had been charged in 2008. Crilly was cleared on all counts in April 2011 as the Judge considered that the prosecution failed to prove intention or prior knowledge on the part of Crilly.
Nairac's killing is one of those under investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Historical Enquiries Team (HET).
Read more about this topic: Robert Nairac
Famous quotes containing the word criminal:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)