“He was subsequently executed and buried in an unmarked grave”

The Provisional IRA’s “P O’Neill” has been briefing selected members of the press again. Or as Brian Rowan puts it in the Belfast Telegraph, “the man I met yesterday no longer functions as P O’Neill, but he still speaks with all the authority of the republican leadership”. They’ve suddenly remembered they ‘disappeared’ somebody else. Joe Lynskey, described as a “senior IRA intelligence officer” in the Irish News which reported “it is believed that Mr Lynskey had a relationship with a married woman, also from Beechmount, while her husband was in prison.” As Brian Rown notes.

In a detailed briefing the source revealed: In 1972 the IRA executed and buried Joe Lynskey; He was an IRA volunteer in Belfast at that time; Lynskey was summoned to a meeting outside Belfast by the then leadership; He wasn’t aware that he was under (IRA) investigation at that stage; He was arrested by the IRA; He was court-martialled for breaches of IRA standing orders; He was subsequently executed and buried in an unmarked grave.

Their memory was obviously jogged by those reports in the Irish News, making this another case of attempted damage limitation. And it adds yet yet another name to the list of the Independent Commission on the Location of Victims Remains. From yesterday’s Irish News.

The Irish News previously revealed how a Monaghan man who was a member of a small IRA unit guarding Mr Lynskey in the days leading up to his death had given details about the murder. He claimed Mr Lynskey was held in an IRA safe-house between Castleblayney and Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, some time in August 1972. The victim was in the house for more than a week waiting for senior IRA members to arrive from north of the border to carry out an internal “court martial” which sealed his fate. Details of Mr Lynskey’s disappearance are expected to be included in a soon-to-be published book Beyond the Grave by journalist Ed Moloney. The book contains transcripts of interviews given to Boston University by IRA man Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes prior to his death from a lengthy illness in 2008. Mr Lynskey never married or had children and while his parents searched tirelessly for their son prior to their deaths, he was never officially reported missing.

As I said when the last name was added to the list

As previously noted, the NI Assembly have debated those “human rights violation[s]” for which limited immunity was sought, and granted, during The Process™. In the Belfast Telegraph, Brian Rowan recounts being read a list in 1999 of “[10] people executed and buried by Oglaigh na hEireann”. But if “There’s no political reason to keep lying”?

Pete Baker