Families of some IRA victims, who were murdered and buried in secret, reacted angrily yesterday after the IRA issued an apology for their prolonged suffering.
The surprise IRA move came just weeks after the discovery of the body of one victim, Belfast woman, Ms Jean McConville on a Co Louth beach - 31 years after she was kidnapped and killed.
In its statement, the IRA said it was "sorry" that the families' suffering had gone on for so long, but it insisted that it had co-operated "in good faith" with searches organised by the gardaí.
However, Mrs Margaret McKinney, whose son Brian was kidnapped and later brutally murdered by the IRA in 1978, declared: "What use are apologies to me? I want peace.
"I want to know why he was murdered. Sorry doesn't mean anything to me. It has caused so much hurt and harm to our family.
"I can never find peace when I think of what Brian's last moments were like. He knew that he was going to die as he walked to his grave with his hands behind his back. That will never go away. I don't think there are words like 'sorry' and 'forgiveness'," a tearful Mrs McKinney declared. Following her son's murder, she said her family had been intimidated.
"I was threatened and shunned and burnt out of my own home. If you are with them, that is all right. But we are not."
The IRA said it passed on new information about the places where it hid the bodies of Mrs McConville and another victim, Mr Colomba McVeigh to the gardaí in recent months. Mr McVeigh's body has not been found. A full "re-examination" of its original 1999 investigation had been undertaken in recent months and IRA members had visited all of the locations to double-check its information.
However, the IRA said the investigation had been a slow process because some of its members involved in the killings are now dead, or no longer part of the organisation.
The McConville family refused to accept the IRA apology: "They should give all the disappeared back to their loved ones and let them have peace," said her daughter, Ms Helen McKendry.
Ms McConville, aged 37, was abducted and murdered after she aided a fatally wounded British soldier outside her front door. The family for years rejected IRA allegations that she had been an informer.
"They will never bring my mother back. The McConville family will never be right again. Most of my family needed the IRA to apologise. To me it does not mean anything," she declared.
Meanwhile, the father of a 24-year-old Armagh man, Mr Gareth O'Connor, who disappeared last May, acknowledged that his son was dead and appealed to the IRA to reveal where it had buried him.
Rejecting the IRA apology, his father, Mr Mark O'Connor said the family would "be prepared to do the digging themselves" to find his son, a father of two from Armagh city. The IRA has consistently denied it had anything to do with the disappearance of Mr O'Connor, who was facing prosecution in the Republic for being a member of the Real IRA.
Dismissing the IRA denials, his uncle, Mr Paul O'Connor said he had been threatened by the IRA on May 8th only to disappear, three days later.
