[10] Rather than returning to his battalion, which was being transferred to Hong Kong, Nairac volunteered for military intelligence duties in Northern Ireland.

Following the completion of several training courses, he returned to Northern Ireland in 1974, attached to 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, one of the three subunits of a Special Duties unit known as 14 Intelligence Company (14 Int).

No one seemed to know who his boss was, and he appeared to have been allowed to get out of control, deciding himself what tasks he would do.Nairac finished his tour with 14th Int in mid-1975 and returned to his regiment in London, having been promoted to Captain on 4 September 1975.

[2] Following a rise in violence culminating in the Kingsmill massacre, the British Army increased their presence in Northern Ireland, and Nairac accepted a post as a liaison officer.

He is said to have told regulars of the pub that he was Danny McErlaine, a motor mechanic and member of the Official IRA from the nationalist Ardoyne area of North Belfast.

[12] Witnesses say that Nairac got up and sang a republican folk song, "The Broad Black Brimmer", with the band who were playing that night.

At around 11.45 p.m. he was marched out of the pub by a number of republicans and hit on the back of the head with a wooden instrument by another man as soon as the group entered the car park.

[13] After a ferocious struggle he was driven across the border into the Republic of Ireland to a field in the Ravensdale Woods in the north of County Louth, where a member of the IRA joined the abduction group.

[14] Following a violent interrogation, during which Nairac was allegedly punched, kicked, pistol-whipped and hit with a wooden post, he was shot dead at that place.

[19] For example, an edition of Spotlight, broadcast on 19 June 2007, asserted that his body was not destroyed in a meat grinder, as alleged by an unnamed IRA source.

[20] McCormick, who was on the run in the United States for thirty years because of his involvement in the killing (including being the first to attack Nairac in the car park), was told by a senior IRA commander that he was first buried on farmland and then reburied elsewhere.

[31] On 20 May 2008, 57-year-old IRA veteran Kevin Crilly of Jonesborough, County Armagh was arrested by officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

[33] Crilly was cleared on all counts in April 2011, as the judge considered that the prosecution had failed to prove intention or prior knowledge on his part.

The citation, as reproduced in The London Gazette, read:[36] Captain Nairac served for four tours of duty in Northern Ireland totalling twenty-eight months.

During the whole of this time he made an outstanding personal contribution: his quick analytical brain, resourcefulness, physical stamina and above all his courage and dedication inspired admiration in everyone who knew him.

Despite his fierce resistance he was overpowered and taken across the border into the nearby Republic of Ireland where he was subjected to a succession of exceptionally savage assaults in an attempt to extract information which would have put other lives and future operations at serious risk.

After several hours in the hands of his captors, Captain Nairac was callously murdered by a gunman of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who had been summoned to the scene.

[36]Posthumous claims have been made about Nairac's involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings, the killing of an IRA member in the Republic of Ireland and his relationship with Ulster loyalist paramilitaries.

[37][38] Allegations were made concerning Nairac in a 1993 Yorkshire Television documentary about the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings of May 1974 entitled Hidden Hand.

In particular, the three prime Dublin [bomb attacks] suspects, Robert McConnell, Harris Boyle and the man called 'The Jackal' (Robin Jackson, Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF] member from Lurgan), were run before and after the Dublin bombings by Captain Nairac.According to the documentary, support for this allegation was said to have come from various sources: They include officers from RUC Special Branch, CID and Special Patrol Group; officers from the Gardaí Special Branch; and key senior loyalists who were in charge of the County Armagh paramilitaries of the day....Geoff Knupfer of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains stated that Nairac was in Ashford, Kent, England at the time of the bombings.

[39] MI6 operative Fred Holroyd said Nairac admitted involvement in the assassination of IRA member John Francis Green on 10 January 1975 to him.

[41][42] Livingstone concluded: There is something rotten at the heart of the British security services, and we will not have a safe democracy until it is exposed in its entirety and dealt with.

Holroyd's evidence was also questioned by Barron in the following terms: The picture derived from this is of a man increasingly frustrated with the failure of the British Authorities to take his claims seriously; who saw the threat to reveal a crossborder SAS assassination.

[44]Geoff Knupfer of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains states Nairac was 80 miles (130 km) away in Derry at the time.

[39] Nairac was mentioned in Mr Justice Henry Barron's inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings when it examined the claims made by the Hidden Hand documentary, Holroyd and Colin Wallace.

[48] Geoff Knupfer of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains states Nairac was in either London or Scotland at this time.

[39] Colin Wallace, in describing Nairac as a Military Intelligence Liaison Officer said "his duties did not involve agent handling".

"[50] According to Weir, members of the gang began to suspect that Nairac was playing republican and loyalist paramilitaries off against each other, by feeding them information about murders carried out by the "other side" with the intention of "provoking revenge attacks".