MI5 AGENT EXPOSES GUN LINKS
Supergrass reveals terror connections
A SCOTS “supergrass” who infiltrated dissident IRA groups helped uncover links to Middle East terror groups, it has been claimed.
Glaswegian Dennis McFadden was exposed last month as an M15 agent who was working as a resource officer with New IRA political front party Saoradh.
Now it has emerged that he secured information that the dissident IRA group was being provided with weapons and finances from Iranian-backed group Hezbollah.
McFadden, believed to be a former special constable in his late 50s, is understood to be under a witn ess protection programme after fleeing his Belfast home last month, shortly before the arrest of 10 people on terror-related charges.
Reports suggest that security services on both sides of the border suspect New IRA links may have “led to the import of arms, including mortars and assault rifles”.
The surveillance- led investigation to infiltrate the New IRA – blamed for the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Londonderry last year – was codenamed Operation Arbacia.
McFadden is from the Gorbals but moved to Northern Ireland about 20 years ago. His spying operations are reported to have established that republican dissidents began communicating with Middle Eastern radical groups in around 2017.
The security services now have information to suggest that republicans travelled to Lebanon in 2018 to meet Hezbollah, a Shia militia backed by Iran.
The Northern Ireland Office wouldn’t comment on claims the New IRA may have imported weapons.