THE body of Capt Robert Nairac, the British army captain kidnapped and killed by the IRA 20 years ago, may have been rendered to meat and bone meal at a meat processing plant in Co Louth, according to a book published this, week.
The account of the Grenadier Guardsman's death is contained in the biography of Eamon Collins, the IRA figure from Newry, Down, who admits his own role in a succession of other IRA in the area during the 1980s.
Collins, who received immunity from prosecution after he implicated several men in IRA murders, in statements to the RUC, said he met the man reputed to have disposed of Capt Nairac's remains.
Collins, in his book Killing Rage, says an IRA man told him Capt Nairac's remains were disposed of "like any other carcass" in the Co Louth meat plant by IRA men who worked there and who hid the body from other staff.
Collins claims Capt Nairac was killed by IRA sympathisers rather than active members. He said a group of men beat Capt Nairac to death after uncovering him as he carried out plain clothes surveillance in a public house in south Armagh.
The IRA never made any comment about what happened to Capt Nairac's body, despite pleas from his family, who are English Catholics.