1. Captain Robert Laurence Nairac was a British Army officer in the Grenadier Guards.
44 Facts About Robert Nairac
1. 2.
Robert Nairac was abducted by republicans from a pub in South Armagh, during an undercover operation he was undertaking, and killed by the IRA.
3.
Robert Nairac's death occurred during his fourth tour of duty in Northern Ireland as a Military Intelligence liaison officer.
4.
At the age of one, Robert Nairac's family relocated to Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, where his father worked at Sunderland Eye Infirmary.
5.
Robert Nairac was the youngest of four children; he had two sisters and a brother.
6.
Robert Nairac attended preparatory school at Gilling Castle, a feeder school for Ampleforth College, a Catholic public school, which he attended a year later.
7.
Robert Nairac became friends with the sons of Lord Killanin and went to stay with the family in Dublin and in Spiddal in Connemara, County Galway.
8.
Robert Nairac read medieval and military history at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he excelled in sport; he played for the Oxford University Rugby 2nd XV and revived the Oxford University boxing club, with which he won four blues in bouts with Cambridge.
9.
Robert Nairac was a falconer, keeping in his rooms a bird that was used in the film Kes.
10.
Robert Nairac left Oxford in 1971 and entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst under the sponsorship of the Grenadier Guards, into which he was commissioned on graduation.
11.
Robert Nairac was frequently involved in such activity on the streets of Belfast and was a community relations activist at the Ardoyne sports club.
12.
Rather than returning to his battalion, which was being transferred to Hong Kong, Robert Nairac volunteered for military intelligence duties in Northern Ireland.
13.
Robert Nairac was the liaison officer for the unit, the local British Army brigade and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
14.
Robert Nairac assumed duties outside his official jurisdiction as a liaison officer, including undercover operations.
15.
Robert Nairac apparently claimed to have visited pubs in Irish republican strongholds, sung Irish rebel songs and acquired the nickname "Danny Boy".
16.
Robert Nairac finished his tour with 14th Int in mid-1975 and returned to his regiment in London, having been promoted to Captain on 4 September 1975.
17.
On his fourth tour, Robert Nairac was a liaison officer in Bessbrook Mill.
18.
Robert Nairac is said to have told regulars of the pub that he was Danny McErlaine, a motor mechanic and member of the Official IRA from the nationalist Ardoyne area of North Belfast.
19.
Witnesses say that Robert Nairac got up and sang a republican folk song, "The Broad Black Brimmer", with the band who were playing that night.
20.
Terry McCormick, one of Robert Nairac's abductors, posed as a priest in order to try to elicit information by way of Robert Nairac's confession.
21.
Robert Nairac is one of three IRA victims whose graves have not been revealed and who are among those known as 'The Disappeared'.
22.
In May 2000, statements were made that Robert Nairac had married and fathered a child with a woman named Nel Lister, known as Oonagh Flynn or Oonagh Lister.
23.
Robert Nairac confessed to killing Nairac and implicated other members of the unit involved.
24.
Robert Nairac had become hysterical and distressed and screamed a confession to the officer in charge of the investigation.
25.
Terry McCormick and Pat Maguire, two other men wanted in connection with Robert Nairac's disappearance, remain on the run.
26.
Robert Nairac had been on the run in the United States but had returned to Northern Ireland under an alias.
27.
Robert Nairac was charged the following day with the kidnapping and false imprisonment of Nairac.
28.
Robert Nairac's killing is one of those under investigation by the PSNI's Historical Enquiries Team.
29.
On 13 February 1979, Robert Nairac was posthumously awarded the George Cross.
30.
Captain Robert Nairac served for four tours of duty in Northern Ireland totalling twenty-eight months.
31.
On his fourth tour Captain Robert Nairac was a Liaison Officer at Headquarters 3 Infantry Brigade.
32.
Robert Nairac has been accused of involvement in the murder of an IRA member and of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
33.
Geoff Knupfer of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains stated that Robert Nairac was in Ashford, Kent, England at the time of the bombings.
34.
MI6 operative Fred Holroyd said Robert Nairac admitted involvement in the assassination of IRA member John Francis Green on 10 January 1975 to him.
35.
Holroyd claimed in a New Statesman article written by Duncan Campbell that Robert Nairac had boasted about Green's death and showed him a colour Polaroid photograph of Green's corpse taken directly after his assassination.
36.
The claims were given prominence when, in 1987, Ken Livingstone, in his maiden speech as an MP, told the House of Commons that Robert Nairac was quite likely to have been the person who organised the Miami Showband killings and that the same gun that was used by Robert Nairac on his cross-border trip to assassinate John Francis Green was used in the Miami showband massacre.
37.
The evidence before the Inquiry that the polaroid photograph allegedly taken by the killers after the murder was actually taken by a Garda officer on the following morning seriously undermines the evidence that Robert Nairac himself had been involved in the shooting.
38.
Robert Nairac was mentioned in Mr Justice Henry Barron's inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings when it examined the claims made by the Hidden Hand documentary, Holroyd and Colin Wallace.
39.
Former RUC Special Patrol Group member John Weir, who was a UVF member, claimed he had received information from an informant that Robert Nairac was involved in the killing of Green,.
40.
Travers was uncertain whether or not Robert Nairac was the man overseeing the attack, stating that his distinct impression was that the man had fair hair, in contrast to Robert Nairac's dark hair.
41.
Martin Dillon in his book The Dirty War, maintained that Robert Nairac was not involved in either attack.
42.
Geoff Knupfer of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains states Robert Nairac was in either London or Scotland at this time.
43.
Robert Nairac "seems to have had close links with the Mid-Ulster UVF, including Robin Jackson and Harris Boyle".
44.
Wallace wrote in 1975; Robert Nairac was on his fourth tour of duty in 1977.