UK Army spy at heart of IRA ‘cost more lives than he saved’
A BRUTAL IRA double agent probably condemned more people to death than he saved, a report concluded yesterday.
But its findings, which included a call for the Government to apologise, were condemned last night for ‘distorting reality’ by comparing the actions of British intelligence with Republican atrocities.
Stakeknife, unmasked in 2003 as Freddie Scappaticci, was regarded as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of efforts to infiltrate the terror group in the 1980s and 90s. The failed footballer was one of the leaders of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit, which was responsible for interrogating, torturing and murdering suspected informers.
But a £40million police investigation, which spent seven years probing 101 murders and abductions, has now linked the agent to at least 14 killings.
After prosecutors last week said no one would be charged, a report into the probe, Operation Kenova, concluded that Stakeknife undoubtedly supplied high-quality intelligence to the Army about the IRA ‘at considerable risk to himself’. But this
was not always acted on for fear of blowing his cover, report author Jon Boutcher found. Among the report’s findings and recommendations are that:
■ Murders were committed by British agents during the Troubles, including cases where one agent murdered another;
■ Rumours that Stakeknife was taken to Chequers to meet Mrs Thatcher are ‘wild nonsense’;
■ A ‘statutory’ framework for investigating all unsolved killings during the Troubles should be set up;
■ The longest day of the year, June 21, should be used to
remember ‘those lost, injured or harmed’ in the Troubles.
Mr Boutcher said claims that intelligence Stakeknife provided led to hundreds of lives being saved were ‘hugely exaggerated’. The true number was ‘between high single figures and low double figures’. It was therefore ‘likely that his crimes as an agent resulted in more lives being lost than were saved’.
Mr Boutcher called for Republican leaders to apologise for the abduction, torture and murder perpetrated by the IRA’s ‘ shameful and evil’ Internal Security Unit. But his report says the British Government should also apologise to families where an individual was harmed or murdered by the terror group ‘where this was preventable’.
In a furious response, Democratic Unionist Party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson suggested the £40million cost could have been better spent on policing. Sir Jeffrey said: ‘Whilst some will want to rewrite history and develop their own narrative of the past which blames those who tried to uphold the law as
‘Willing to inflict violence’
much as the terrorists, this is a distortion of reality.’
Former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers said the vast majority of security forces in the province had served with professionalism.
The report stops short of confirming that Scappaticci was Stakeknife. He is said to have joined the IRA in 1969 and was later interned. With his violent temper and willingness to inflict violence, he was later recruited to the Internal Security Unit.
He died last April after living under protection in Surrey.