Robert Nairac, the Sas and the Three Steps Inn

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(A full account can be read in Ken Connor’s Ghost Force: the Secret History of the SAS. Connor was the longest-serving soldier in the SAS. He was personally involved in this incident.) Students of the Troubles in Northern Ireland know that on 14-15 May 1977 Captain Robert Nairac GC was abducted from the Three Steps Inn in Drumintee, Co. Armagh, tortured and murdered by members of the Provisional IRA and sympathisers. His remains have never been found. It is less well-known that the SAS (the Special Air Service Regiment), with whom Nairac had been co-located, although he was not a member of that regiment, paid a return visit to the Three Steps Inn a matter of weeks after Nairac’s murder. Unlike Nairac, they took every precaution before moving in. Six SAS men lay in a hedge bottom a few yards from the Three Steps Inn wearing combat fatigues and black camouflage face paint. Each one carried an automatic pistol, a Heckler-Koch sub-machine gun, a few flash-bang grenades, a jemmy to break windows and a car-jack to spread door-jambs. This was all the equipment that they needed to break into a building, rescue hostages and get them out alive. There was a glow of warm light from the pub. The usual sounds issued: people talking and laughing; music playing. It was a normal Saturday night scene and could have been anywhere in the British Isles. Two giants of men came striding down the street. Both were well over six feet tall and powerfully built. They were unarmed but wore camouflage uniforms and sand-coloured berets with a distinctive “winged dagger” badge. Lawrence and Rover were SAS men and were advertising the fact for anyone who cared to look. Without breaking stride they marched straight up the steps and through the door of the pub. The music came to an abrupt stop, as if the bad guys had walked into a Wild West saloon. Voices were raised for a few seconds;

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