"They're a shower of bastards," eighty-year-old Vera McVeigh says from her
kitchen in Donaghmore, Co Tyrone. "Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and all those
politicians.
"They make grand statements on Kenneth Bigley but do nothing about those
abducted here. Do you have to be kidnapped halfway round the world to
matter? I try not to use bad talk about them, especially in front of the
priest, but they make me mad."
Vera shows the last photograph of her son Columba, taken when he was 16, the
year before he disappeared. He'd just won a talent competition and is
resplendent in top-hat and tails.
"Isn't he a gorgeous big fellow? He was crazy about his mammy. If I was
sitting on the settee, he'd be down beside me, putting his arm around my
shoulder. He loved Frank Sinatra, John Wayne and playing cards.
"He was always messing around, you couldn't shut him up. He loved the girls
and the dances far too much. I never thought the Provos would waste a
bullet on Columba. He didn't have much up here, you know," says Vera,
tapping her head.
She points to Columba's chair: "He sat there and his red setter Dusty would
be at his feet. If he bought a bar of chocolate for himself, he'd buy her
one. At Christmas, when we'd get tins of biscuits as presents, Columba would
take out all the pink wafers for Dusty."
On Halloween night 1975, Columba left his flat in Dolphins Barn, Dublin, and
went to the pub for cigarettes. He was never seen again. Sources say
several carloads of IRA members, waiting outside, bundled him into one
vehicle.
It had all started the previous year. The British Army recruited him as an
informer, giving him bullets to hide in his bedroom. The plan was that they
would raid the house, he would escape and seek help from a local man
suspected of ferrying IRA members across the Border.
But the man refused Columba who was arrested and charged with possession of
ammunition. He served four months in Crumlin Road jail. Under interrogation
from IRA inmates, he confessed to being an informer. He also claimed British
intelligence had planned to pass him poison on a visit to kill the IRA OC,
Brendan Hughes.
Sources say Columba gave the IRA other information too, mostly untrue,
because he was naïve and scared. When Columba was released from prison, his
family sent him to Dublin where they believed he'd be safe.
"When he disappeared, I thought he'd got a girl pregnant and was frightened
to face his father," says Vera. "Every Christmas and on his birthday, I'd
still buy him socks and shirts. I gathered three drawers of clothes for him.
If he'd come home with 20 children, I wouldn't have cared."
Family friend and SDLP councillor Vincent Currie, who was working in Dublin,
tried to find out Columba's whereabouts: "An IRA man I knew told me to stop
asking questions. He said Columba had been 'dealt with'." Officially, the
IRA denied abducting and killing him. It wasn't until 1999 they admitted it.
Information was given that the body was in a Monaghan bog but a dig
uncovered nothing. "Gerry Adams is a hypocrite for appealing for Bigley when
for 24 years the Provos lied to us about Columba and even now they won't
give us enough information," says Vera.
"They won't tell me when they kiled him. I don't even have an anniversary
date but the priest told me it would have been all over quickly so I mark
Columba's death on November 2nd."
Monsignor Denis Faul, who campaigns for the families, says the Provos must
act: "This is far more important than decommissioning because it can really
improve people's lives. Old Mrs Bigley was in hell for three weeks but old
Mrs McVeigh has been in hell for three decades.
"G Adams and P O'Neill must do more. The people who know where the bodies
are have given bits of information but not it all. There's an 'omerta', a
mafia-type fear. The IRA leadership must guarantee individuals' safety if
they talk. The Provos should then dig up the bodies themselves or give more
information to the Garda.
"If this is impossible, they must at least tell the families the story -
detail by detail - of what happened their loved ones, how they were
abducted, tortured and killed.
"The Provos demand every detail - and rightly so - about Pat Finucane and
others. These families deserve the same for closure. The Irish government
must also put more pressure on the Provos. The disappeared were killed and
buried on their territory."
After last year's discovery of the remains of mother-of-ten Jean McConville,
the most high-profile case among the disappeared, the public perception is
that the issue is sorted. But only four bodies have been found; 10 are still
missing.
Sandra Peake of the bereaved relatives group WAVE says: "It's a lonely
struggle for the families, especially in Border areas where the community
doesn't talk about it."
The governments introduced legislation prohibiting evidence found with the
bodies from being used legally so nobody risks prosecution. Vera thinks of
Columba "morning, noon and night" but could cope better if his body was
found: "I wouldn't be fit to go to the grave every day but at least I'd know
where my child was. That's all any mother wants."
