Son's appeal to find mother's body

Jean McConville with three of her 10 children

The son of a woman abducted and murdered by the IRA has called for her killers to help locate her remains.

Michael McConville was speaking on the 30th anniversary of the abduction of his mother Jean from their west Belfast home. The killing left her 10 children orphaned.

Jean McConville, one of the so-called Disappeared, was accused of being an Army informer, a claim strenuously denied by her family.

In 1999, the IRA offered to help locate the bodies of the Disappeared in 1999 but Mrs McConville's remains were not found, despite two extensive excavations, the first lasting 50 days, at Templetown Beach in Carlingford, County Louth.

There was an extensive search for Jean McConville's body

Michael McConville, who was aged 11 when his mother was taken by the IRA, said he forgave her killers.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence programme, he said: "I will never forget the hurt and anger we have suffered and I will never forget them taking my mother out that night, the distress that was on my mum's face.

"I want those who know where my mother's body is, if they have any conscience at all, to come forward and let us know."

Jean McConville helped a soldier who lay injured outside her home during a gun battle with the IRA. Her son said he believed that was the reason why she was murdered.

"They said she was an informer but I know and the rest of the family know that was untrue," he said.

"My father had died 10 months earlier and my mother had a mental breakdown. She was in no fit state to gather information on anybody."

'Recognise pain'

A special service was held in his mother's memory at St Peter's Cathedral in Belfast on Saturday.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan, who attended the memorial mass, said politicians had to recognise the pain and hurt of victims.

"It is very easy for politicians to talk glibly about various processes and closure. In reality victims continue to suffer the hurt," he said.

"We have to make sure we don't ghettoise or patronise victims and the best way to do that is to allow victims to speak for themselves."