The killing and secret burying of “The Disappeared” by the IRA was “totally wrong, cruel and unjustified,” Martin McGuinness has said.
Martin McGuinness.
The Deputy First Minister said anyone with information as to where the remains of the victims were buried should come forward and present it to somebody in authority.
Addressing MLAs at a meeting of the Stormont Assembly, Mr McGuinness said there was a “huge responsibility” on everybody, including himself, to appeal to anyone with information to come forward and end the daily “nightmare” of the families of those missing.
Mr McGuinness said: “I and other republican leaders have over the course of a number of years been involved in exhorting anyone with any scrap of information whatsover about the location of these bodies to bring them forward and that has brought considerable success for some families but sadly not for other, and I would reiterate my appeal to anyone out there in the community who was in any way involved in any of these situations to bring forward that information.”
He added: “It has been a terrible ordeal, it has been a despicable ordeal and I believe there is a huge responsibility on everybody, including myself as a republican leader, to appeal to anybody out there who can assist these families out of the nightmare that they face on a daily basis.
“What happened to those families was totally and absolutely wrong. I believe it was cruel, I believe it was unjustified. Of course the IRA were responsible.”
Mr McGuinness was speaking ahead of a television documentary to be screened at 11.15pm on BBC One tonight in which some of the families of The Disappeared speak publicly for the first time.
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