So you know for sure the men who carried out this particular atrocity considererd themselves "British"? I consider them Irish, which is the point I was making in my response. My first comment was not meant as a critique or an endorsement of this murder, just a reflection on the sadness and inevitability of a horrendous part of Irish history. These killings were carried out by Irishmen and not Brits, the VAST majority of killings in NI were carried out by your fellow countrymen and not Brits and to suggest otherwise is to ignore the obvious.
Rubbish. Ask anyone who carried out this act weather they are Irish or British and you will find your answer. What you consider them is neither here nor there. I do find the fact that a former British invader can so willingly call Loyalists, controlled by various strands of British intelligence, Irish, quite amusing.
What an amazingly daft answer. How do you suggest I ask them and what makes you think I care what nationality they consider themselves? They are "Irish" (Ulstermen even) unless they were born elsewhere. As for Robert Nairac being involved, I suppose it's easy to lay the blame at the door of a man who is not here to defend himself and i'm afraid the source of that allegation, Captain Fred Holroyd is not exactly reliable. He spent some time in a mental institution and was described by some as a "Walter Mitty" type. The allegations against Nairac are easily believed by some who wish to somehow justify his own murder, and i'm afraid it will take more than the word of "one man" to convince me that Nairac was organising assassinations, never mind the cold blooded murders of a showband. That has all the hallmarks of a sickening sectarian crime and nothing more, the military had absolutely nothing to gain from killing the members of a band, so are we to rewrite history and put every sectarian killing in Northern Ireland down to the British Army?
Fine upstanding witnesses too i'll bet and they have no motive to shift the blame onto a dead man do they? And tell me, how did the survivor know it was Nairac who planned it? Was Nairac hiding in the bushes nearby?
He stopped at the checkpoint and talked to the OC while the band were being held.....then drove off before the explosion
That's news to me so maybe you have a source for this information? Why has no one else mentioned it? Also you seem to know an awful lot so tell me, is that why the IRA killed him?
Lazy **** Allegations of collusion between British Military Intelligence and the loyalist paramilitaries, leading to the attack, persist. According to former MI6 agent Captain Fred Holroyd, the killings were organised by British Army officer and member of 14th Intelligence Company, Captain Robert Nairac in collaboration with Robin Jackson and the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade, which Jackson commanded. After McCoy told them they were the Miami Showband, one gunman, Thomas Crozier (who had a notebook) asked the band members for their names and addresses, while the others bantered with them about the success of their performance that night.[4][18][28] As Crozier took down the information, a car pulled up and another uniformed man appeared on the scene. He wore a uniform and beret noticeably different from the others.[4] He spoke with an educated English accent and immediately took charge, ordering a man who appeared to have been the leader of the patrol, to tell Crozier to obtain their names and dates of birth instead of addresses.[4][21] The jocular mood of the gunmen abruptly ceased. At no time did this new soldier speak to any of the band members nor did he directly address Crozier. He relayed all his instructions to the gunman in command.[29] Travers, the band's new bass player, assumed he was a British Army officer; an opinion shared by McCoy. Just after the arrival of this mysterious soldier, McCoy nudged Travers, who was standing beside him, and reassured him by saying "Don't worry Stephen, this is British Army".[21][22][30] Travers thought that McCoy, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, was familiar with security checkpoints and had reckoned the regular British Army would be more efficient than the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), who had a reputation for unprofessional and unpredictable behaviour especially towards people from the Irish Republic.[29][31] Wiki
Bandmember mccoys in depth knowledge of the names of every officer in the British Army failed him on this occasion
But not yours, you KNOW it was Nairac? Where does it say that Nairac was that soldier, who from the showband, which "survivor of the attack" identified him, which is what you said?
Don't expect a proper answer. I'm guessing this fella only heard about this story yesterday and so has to took to wiki to get his in depth knowledge.
If indeed, as has been suggested, that Nairac was behind the Miami showband murders several OBVIOUS questions arise: A: What was his motive? What possible good could have come of the savage murder of innocent civilians by the Army? If it had been a bus full of known IRA men I may have been more likely to give any weight to the suggestion, but it was not, it was a group of innocent men who had no connection to any paramilitary organisation as far as I know. B: Why was he murdered in 1977? It certainly was not because he was behind the Miami Showband killings, that is established because no mention of his alleged involvement was made until very recently, none of the men involved in his murder ever mentioned it at any stage, in fact one of the men convicted of his murder, Liam Towson, said of Nairac: ""the bravest man I ever met. He told us nothing". Hardly the words an IRA man is likely to use to describe a man who was apparently behind several assassinations, IRA men included. C: If he was indeed the prime mover behind the murders are we to believe that by some lucky happenstance the IRA just happened to have killed the man who organised the murders? That seems ridiculously far-fetched to say the least. Nairac is a convenient scapegoat for people attempting to shift the blame for their own actions, he's dead and cannot defend himself and it would come as no real surprise in future to hear his name mentioned in connection with other killings in NI prior to his death. The fact that he was an SAS man only makes him an easy target for whispering campaigns and rumours. When John McAleese (another SAS man and the first man through the window in the Iranian embasy siege) died earlier this year, within days, allegations of him being into child porn arose out of nowhere, a simple attempt to blacken his name and his memory. Same as Nairac. It comes with the territory for SAS soldiers.
