London: The United Kingdom’s security services protected a top spy planted within the Irish Republican Army when 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 new report reveals.

A final report into the actions of the notorious agent codenamed Stakeknife – a senior IRA member who passed information to British intelligence during the conflict known as the Troubles – revealed that Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency “had greater and earlier knowledge” of his activities than previously known.

The 164-page report links Stakeknife – widely believed to be the senior IRA member Freddie Scappaticci, described by London’s Telegraph as an executioner – to the IRA’s ruthless internal security unit.

Operating for decades from the 1970s, he was allegedly involved in more than a dozen killings, abductions and torture – but even now, the UK government refuses to confirm the agent’s identity, maintaining protocol.

Scappaticci died at age 77 in 2023 without ever being charged or convicted of any offences during the Troubles.

Senior military figures treated him as the “crown jewel” of British intelligence, and he had a reputation as “the goose that laid the golden eggs”, according to the Telegraph. He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by the British Army and a military unit – known as the “Rat Hole” – was established to assist with his management.

The police investigation – known as Operation Kenova – examined about 100 killings and abductions linked to the IRA’s notorious “nutting squad”, which was responsible for interrogating, torturing and killing people suspected of passing information to British security forces during the conflict.

While the probe began in 2016, the new report revealed MI5 provided fresh material as recently as last year. It showed that Stakeknife’s handlers twice flew him out of Northern Ireland for “holidays” when they knew he was wanted for conspiracy to murder and false imprisonment.

MI5 director general Ken McCallum said he was sorry for the late discoveries, but maintained that no files were deliberately withheld. He offered sympathies to the victims and families of those who were tortured or killed by the IRA.

“MI5 retrieved and provided to the Kenova investigation a very large volume of historical records,” he said.

“Regrettably, after this extensive disclosure process was complete, we discovered additional relevant information. MI5 informed Kenova and shared the material without delay.”

Jon Boutcher, the chief constable of Northern Ireland’s police force, said the late disclosure of the files was a “serious organisational failure” on the part of MI5 that undermined the trust of victims and their families.

“The organisation’s role in running Stakeknife was far from peripheral, as had been claimed,” he said.

Boutcher said while the spy was an important source of intelligence, he was also involved in “the most serious and inexcusable criminality while operating as an agent, including murders”.

He added that the government’s refusal to officially name the agent was “untenable and bordering on farce”.

The families of some of those killed by the ISU said Kenova missed a “key detail” in not naming Stakeknife.

“You can’t investigate the agent known as Stakeknife, spend all the money, and then not find out who he is – that seems like a gaping own goal,” said Paul Wilson, whose father Thomas Emmanuel Wilson was killed in 1987.

Moira Todd, whose brother Eugene Simons disappeared in 1981, said her family had searched for years trying to find him, but authorities knew all along what had happened to him. His body was found years later – by chance – in a shallow grave in County Louth.

“It’s 45 years ago, almost to the day, since my brother was taken and tortured by Stakeknife. He was murdered after. The authorities had all the details,” she said.

“I just want someone to take me into a room and tell me the truth. If they want a non-disclosure agreement, I’ll sign it. I just want to know the truth.”

“Forty-five years on, I’m sitting here, really none the wiser, and hearing about the truth being suppressed, and the government avoiding accountability, and it’s just totally frustrating.”

The inquiry’s author, Sir Iain Livingstone, called on authorities to make an exception and name Stakeknife, arguing it was in the public interest.

Operation Kenova found that the cultivation and recruitment of Stakeknife started in the 1970s, and he continued to operate as an agent into the 1990s. It discovered more than 3500 intelligence reports from the spy, but found that authorities often appeared to prioritise the protection of the agent at the expense of others who were harmed or killed.

The Telegraph reported that the Kenova report estimated that the number of lives saved by his intelligence-gathering was between the “high single figures and low double figures”. Livingstone, concluded it was likely that Stakeknife’s actions “resulted in more lives being lost than were saved”.

However, some British military figures questioned that.

Colonel Tim Collins, a former British Army officer who served with the SAS and as commander of the Royal Irish Regiment during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said agents such as Stakeknife helped prevent wider bloodshed.

“The report lays bare a catalogue of failures – operational, ethical and institutional – that cannot be ignored,” he said, writing for the Telegraph.

“The question is not whether agent-handling was perfect. It wasn’t. The question is whether it was necessary. And it was – because the alternative was far worse.”

Colonel Philip Ingram, a former officer in army intelligence – who claimed to have known some of Stakeknife’s handlers – insisted the agent would have saved more people than investigators have claimed.

“What’s impossible to put out are those he will have saved indirectly by other operations being disrupted or the right comments [that] pushed other potential operations in another direction. Stakeknife and other agents will have saved hundreds if not thousands of lives,” he told the Telegraph.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement largely ended the conflict involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and the UK security forces that left 3600 people dead, some 50,000 wounded, and thousands bereaved.

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.