IRA suspect arrested in N.Ireland for 1977 killing

Capt. Robert Nairac was abducted from a border pub by an IRA gang on May 14, 1977, taken across the border into a Republic of Ireland forest, and shot through the head. His body was never been found.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland press office confirmed the arrest of a 57-year-old man Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in Nairac's killing.

A Northern Ireland detective identified the suspect as Kevin Crilly, an IRA veteran who spent decades on the run in the Irish Republic and the United States following the Nairac killing. The detective spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media about the case.

Crilly returned to his native South Armagh borderland, the IRA's major rural power base, following the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. That landmark pact delivered speedy paroles for IRA and other paramilitary prisoners and ensured that IRA members would walk free if convicted of any pre-1998 crimes.

Crilly appeared on Northern Ireland television in June 2007 as part a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary in which he discussed Nairac's killing. Afterward, Protestant politicians demanded that the case be reopened and Crilly arrested.

Three IRA men were convicted of Nairac's murder and three others for lesser roles in the killing in 1977 and 1978, but police long have said they wanted to question three other IRA suspects who evaded capture. One of the suspects, Terry McCormick, fled to the United States and remains there today; he appeared on the same 2007 BBC program to discuss his role in the killing.

Nairac, who died at age 29, remains one of the most enigmatic and fiercely debated figures from the four-decade conflict over Northern Ireland. He is the only one of more than 700 British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland whose remains have never been found.

He posthumously won the George Cross, Britain's highest civilian award for bravery. The 1979 citation credited the former boxer with exceptional toughness and bravery, for trying to overpower and escape from a seven-member IRA gang and refusing to reveal anything to his executioners.

He was an Oxford-educated English Catholic who, during four increasingly reckless tours of duty in Northern Ireland, posed as an IRA member from Belfast as he traveled in South Armagh. On the night of his abduction, he drove from the main British base in South Armagh to an IRA-sympathetic border pub, where he sang an IRA song to the crowd.