THE family of an IRA man shot dead by the SAS believe one of his teeth may have been "torn out" and kept as a 'trophy' by British soldiers.
Patrick Kelly's sister Mairead Kelly described the possibility that one his canine teeth was removed after he was killed as "grotesque".
Eight IRA members were killed at Loughgall in Co Armagh in May 1987 as the unit attempted to launch a gun and bomb attack on the village RUC station.
A passing civilian was also killed in what many believe to have been an SAS 'shoot-to-kill' operation.
Details of the Kelly family concerns came after it was claimed this week that close-up images of the dead IRA men later “decked” the wall of a British army training camp.
The claims about the images were made in an article in The Times by journalist and former British soldier Anthony Loyd.
Ms Kelly said a pathology report seen by relatives revealed that a tooth was missing from her brother's mouth.
The report said: "The right upper canine tooth had recently been torn out."
Ms Kelly believes the tooth was removed by British soldiers as her brother had not lost any teeth in the days before his death and branded the practice of taking 'trophies' from victims of violence as "horrific".
"When you think about it, it is quiet horrific, but it's something down through history that happens," she said.
"Because you hear of way, way back in tribal wars... where they might have taken the heads of people that they had killed and kept them.
"It's like that, it's quiet grotesque, so its not something that wouldn't be unheard of."
Ms Kelly said her family is troubled by the thought that a body part belonging to their loved one could have been taken.
"The thing that bothers us the most is the fact somebody is actually sitting somewhere with that and does this get taken out and displayed?" she said.
"I could talk about it and be detached from it but when you think about it, it's actually really bad."
Writing this week about Prince Harry’s recent claim that he killed 25 people while fighting in Afghanistan, Mr Loyd recalled how as an infantry platoon commander in the late 1980s he attended a British army training camp in preparation for being sent to the north.
He said a wall at the camp “was decked with close-up colour photographs of the eight members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade killed in an SAS ambush at Loughgall a few months earlier during an attack on a police station”.
“They had all been shot in the head, multiple times, at close range. The wounds were hideous,” he said.
He also wrote that the photos were reproduced in a training video.
“The same images of mutilation were replayed to us at the start of training videos to the soundtrack of Another One Bites the Dust,” he said.
“It was army kill-count crassness at its worst.”
Ms Kelly said the ghoulish act had “mocked and desecrated” the dead and caused hurt to their families.
Independent councillor Barry Monteith said: "British soldiers revelling in the deaths of those they have killed in Ireland.
"This de-humanisation is part of the anti-Irishness rife throughout the British establishment."
A spokesman for the MoD said: “There are ongoing legal proceedings relating to this incident and as such it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.”
In 2019 The Irish News revealed how the family of a man whose skull was used as an ashtray by members of the Parachute Regiment after he was shot dead had spoken of their "deep distress".
Henry Thornton (28), from south Armagh, was killed as he travelled along Belfast's Springfield Road in August 1971.
Details of the incident were raised at an inquest into the killing of 10 people over three days in Ballymurphy in west Belfast in 1971 by the Parachute Regiment.
