Northern Ireland’s nationalists and the Irish government demanded explanations from London on Monday after it was revealed that a top-level mole had been working inside the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for the British government for over 20 years.
”The claims are extremely serious” for Northern Ireland’s fragile peace process, said Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, the province’s largest Roman Catholic paramilitary group.
”We will demand that the British government comes clean on its collusion policy,” said Kelly, who believes the latest revelation is just part of a long British army legacy of spying in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland’s predominantly Catholic nationalists and republicans want the province united with the Irish Republic to the south, while the mainly Protestant unionists or loyalists want it to remain part of the United Kingdom.
According to British and Irish media, the informer, whose codename was Stakeknife, killed between 20 and 40 people with the blessing of British intelligence services.
An Irish diplomat handling Northern Ireland affairs said that the Dublin government would demand an explanation from London.
”We will be asking for a briefing on the activities of Stakeknife, particularly south of the border,” said the diplomat.
In particular, Irish officials would be seeking to find out ”who was taking the decisions as far as he was concerned, and at what level”, the diplomat added.
After the exposure on Sunday of Freddie ”Scap” Scappaticci from west Belfast as the double agent, the stunned IRA leadership has ordered an immediate review of its internal security.
Scappatici (45) was one of the IRA’s key men in tracing down informers who were later interrogated, tortured and shot dead, British and Irish papers revealed.
He is also suspected of tipping off British security chiefs involved in an undercover operation when three IRA men were shot dead by British Special Air Services special forces in Gibraltar in 1988.
Scappaticci, once a close associate of Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, will be given a new identity and moved abroad.
First though, he must face questions by British police chief John Stevens, who is investigating alleged collusion involving Britain’s security forces and Northern Ireland’s paramilitary groups.
Scappatici was a feared and ruthless member of the IRA’s internal security unit in Belfast, but had been working as a double agent, allegedly on an annual salary of ₤80 000 (about $130 000).
Many of his victims were also IRA double agents whom he feared could blow his cover if they were not killed off, according to security sources.
”We are in peacetime, but people tend to forget that during the 70s and 80s it was for us a battle of survival. Quite frankly, if a member of the IRA indicated they were going to take steps to eliminate another member of the IRA, nobody lost much sleep,” an unnamed former agent said on Monday.
”The only people who we were interested in preserving were those people who had made up their mind — and will never get a medal for it — who detested the organisation, but who were prepared to stay in it and report on it.
”Over the years they have been belittled and maligned, referred to as things which crawl out from under stones. In actual fact they were among those of the bravest souls around,” the source said.
”Scappaticci did it for whatever reason, but he did it in the full knowledge that if at anytime information was mishandled, his life was lost,” the source said. – Sapa-AFP