was Anna McShane, whose father, Charlie Armstrong, was abducted while on his way to Mass in 1981.

She told the BBC that all her family wanted was to be able to give him a Christian burial and finally achieve closure after so long. "There are people we know and meet every day that know something," McShane added, "and it's those people that we're actually begging now to come forward - we're not looking for any kind of retaliation."

Following the establishment of the commission for the disappeared in 1999, which formed part of the Good Friday peace agreement, the Provisionals passed on information about the location of six graves that contained eight bodies. However, only four sets of remains have so far been recovered, and in the case of Jean McConville (pictured below), the discovery was accidental.

The circumstances of McConville's murder in

1972 are particularly harrowing: a widow who had converted to Catholicism, the mother of 10 children, she was accused of spying for the British. In fact, her only 'crime' was to have comforted a young British soldier who had been shot and lay dying outside her house.

Acting on the basis of information from the IRA, intensive searches were undertaken around a beach in the Irish Republic, but it was not until 2003 that someone walking on another beach not far away chanced upon McConville's remains.

The families of those who are still missing are understandably concerned by the possibility that the search process may be wound up by the end of next year. Kieran Megraw's brother Brendan was kidnapped from his home in West Belfast in 1978 and so far, no indication about where he was buried has emerged.

"The forensic searching team... is only going to be in place for another 12 months... so now is the time to get information about Brendan."