John McIlwaine obituary

The forensic archaeologist John McIlwaine, who has died aged 51 after suffering a heart attack, played a leading role in a complex operation to locate the bodies of up to 19 people who were abducted, murdered and secretly buried in unmarked ground by Irish Republican paramilitaries.

As part of the Northern Ireland peace process, the British and Irish governments established a joint commission in 1999 to lead a hunt for the concealed graves and enable the families of the "disappeared", as they came to be known, to give their loved ones proper funerals, rebury them and bring to an end long ordeals of grief and mourning dating as far back as the 1970s.