Suspected IRA man charged with murder
DUBLIN - A suspected Irish Republican Army man was charged yesterday with the murder of a British Army intelligence agent on the Northern Ireland border 32 years ago, a surprising turn in one of the conflict’s most mysterious killings.
Northern Ireland state prosecutors levied the unexpected charge at a bail hearing for Kevin Crilly. The 58-year-old was arrested last year and charged with kidnapping and falsely imprisoning Captain Robert Nairac.
In May 1977 an IRA gang abducted Nairac from a pub in the dissident group’s border stronghold of South Armagh, a society that Nairac had sought to infiltrate by posing as a Belfast IRA man. The Oxford University-educated Catholic had learned Gaelic-language IRA drinking songs and a rough Belfast accent. But he didn’t fool local IRA men.
His body was never found.
Crilly admits to driving at least one IRA member on the night of the killing but denies further involvement. He fled to the United States and returned home in 2004 using another name, Declan Parr.
