A man was charged last night with the murder, more than 30 years ago, of Captain Robert Nairac, the undercover Army officer whose body has never been found in one of the most infamous killings of the Troubles.

Kevin Crilly, 59, from Jonesborough, south Armagh, is already facing charges of kidnapping and falsely imprisoning the Grenadier Guardsman, who was 29, near the Irish border in 1977.

Captain Nairac, who was from Gloucestershire, was interrogated, tortured and then shot dead by the Provisional IRA after being taken by force from a pub car park near Jonesborough.

He was driven to a field in Ravensdale, County Louth, just south of the border. After being murdered it was rumoured that his body was dismembered and fed to pigs.

Prosecutors laid the murder charge before Mr Crilly as he appeared at Newry Magistrates’ Court for a routine bail hearing on the two lesser counts, with which he was charged last year.

Although District Judge Austin Kennedy granted Mr Crilly bail he then ordered him to remain in custody after Crown lawyers indicated that they may seek to appeal against the decision in the High Court in Belfast.

In the years after Captain Nairac’s disappearance, three men were convicted of his murder, but police have always said they were looking for more suspects.

Mr Crilly was interviewed by detectives in the weeks after the incident but fled to the United States before officers could arrest him on suspicion of murder.

Judge Kennedy was told today that the suspect had remained in the US for almost 30 years.

Investigating officer Detective Sergeant Barry Graham said that, when he returned, he took another name, explaining that Mr Crilly was adopted as a child and had assumed his birth name of Declan Parr.

“The only reason he returned to Northern Ireland was because he was in a long-term relationship in America and that relationship had broken down,” the sergeant said.

The officer told the judge that he could connect Mr Crilly with the murder charge and the two other counts of kidnapping and false imprisonment.

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