The first search for the remains of Co Armagh man Seamus Maguire, one of the Disappeared IRA victims, represents “quite a momentous day”, the lead investigator has said.Eamonn Henry, of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), said information obtained from different sources indicated a site in Derryclone, Co Armagh, “is the place where he was buried”. Digging began on the two-acre area of private farmland on Tuesday.Maguire (29), from Aghagallon, near Lurgan, went missing in the 1970s, but was not added to the list of the Disappeared until 2022. He is believed to have been killed by the Provisional IRA in 1976.Speaking at a press conference in Belfast on Tuesday, Henry confirmed machinery and archaeologists had arrived at the dig site. He said he did not want to put a time frame on it, but the operation would take a number of weeks given the ground was “much more” stable than bog land. Seamus Maguire. Photograph: Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains/PA “We don’t undertake searches lightly,” he said, adding that information gathered since 2022 had led the commission to begin the dig. “We have to be satisfied there is a reasonable opportunity here to find Seamus’s remains.” “It is quite a momentous day, to begin this search for one of the Disappeared.”In a statement, the Maguire family described Seamus Maguire as “our much-loved eldest brother” and said “our mum looked for Seamus right up until the day that she died”.They said “he has been missing now for over 50 years” and they hoped the ICLVR “can now recover Seamus’s body so that he can be buried in St Patrick’s graveyard in Aghagallon with our parents, May and Patrick”.Seamus Maguire had lived and worked locally in the community before spending time in Manchester, England. It was subsequently suggested that he may have returned to Northern Ireland and “was then killed and secretly buried in the Aghagallon/Derryclone area in 1976 aged 29”, reporters were told.A total of 17 people known as the Disappeared were abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republican paramilitaries during the Troubles. The remains of four – Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh, Robert Nairac and Maguire – have yet to be recovered.It is the first search for one of the Disappeared in Northern Ireland since 2010, when the remains of Peter Wilson were recovered from a beach in Co Antrim.Asked about Maguire’s involvement with the Provisional IRA, Henry said the commission has yet to determine what branch he “was believed to have been involved in or if he was involved in them at all”.Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains lead investigator Eamonn Henry addresses the media during a press conference at the Clayton Hotel in Belfast, on Tuesday. Photograph: Rebecca Black/PA Wire “We are still not sure of that,” he added. “We have been trying to join all the dots ... those parts have eluded us at this stage. That’s why I’m asking people with information to please come forward.”He said Maguire’s mother had searched “tirelessly” for him until her death and believed he was alive. “Put yourself in her shoes,” he added. “Can you imagine the anxiety, the stress, the hurt that she incurred in looking for her son right up to her dying day ... Would you like your own mother to be going through this?”Henry said the ICLVR is keen to hear from members of the public who may know what happened to Maguire. “There may be an assumption that because a search is under way the commission has all the information we need. That is not necessarily the case,” he said. “If there is anyone who has any information on this case please get it to us.”