LONDON (AP) — British security services protected a senior spy within the Irish Republican Army after they knew he was wanted by police for murder and continued to suppress the truth about the agent decades after Northern Ireland’s bloody conflict, a report released Tuesday found.
The final report into Operation Stakeknife revealed that MI5 intelligence had “more and earlier knowledge” of his activities than previously known. The agent was a senior member of the IRA who passed information to British intelligence during the conflict known as the Troubles.
This spy is regarded as the most core spy within the British IRA. He is widely believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, who had links to the IRA’s brutal internal security unit and was allegedly involved in more than a dozen killings, torture and kidnappings.
Scappatic, who died in 2023 at the age of 77, was never charged or convicted of any crime during the conflict.
The report said the latest information provided by MI5 last year showed that Stackknife’s handlers twice flew him out of Northern Ireland for “holidays” when he was wanted for conspiracy to murder and false imprisonment.
Jon Butcher, the chief constable of Northern Ireland’s Police Service, said on Tuesday that the delay in releasing the documents was a “serious organizational failure” by MI5 that undermined the trust of victims and their families.
“The organization’s role in running Stakeknife is far from secondary as claimed,” Butcher said.
He said that while the spy was an important source of intelligence, he was also involved in “the most serious and inexcusable criminal conduct during his time as an agent, including murder.”
Butcher added that the government’s refusal to formally name the agent “is indefensible and borders on farce.”
MI5 chief Ken McCallum said he was sorry for the latest discovery but insisted no documents had been deliberately withheld. He expressed his sympathy to the victims and families of those tortured or killed by the IRA.
The police investigation known as Operation Kenova began in 2016 and investigated around 100 killings and kidnappings linked to the IRA’s notorious “Nut Cell”, which interrogated, tortured and killed people suspected of passing information to British security forces during the conflict.
The investigation found that Stakeknife’s grooming and recruitment began in the 1970s and continued to operate as an agent into the 1990s. It uncovered more than 3,500 intelligence reports from the spy, but found authorities often appeared to prioritize protecting the agent at the expense of others who were injured or killed.
An interim report released last year found that “murders that could and should have been prevented were committed with the knowledge of security forces, and those responsible were not brought to justice but were allowed to reoffend.”
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement essentially ended a conflict involving Irish republicans, British loyalist militants and British security forces that left 3,600 people dead, some 50,000 injured and thousands more bereaved.