Dirty double dealing

The murky world of a double agent has been exposed

FROM Gibraltar to Co Louth, Alfredo 'Freddie' Scappaticci may have been involved indirectly in up to 40 murders.

Living in the hardline Andersonstown area of west Belfast, everything about the way Scappaticci, 45, dressed and acted appeared working class despite earning a reputed £80,000 as a double agent.

But then what you saw and what you got were often two quite different things with Scappaticci.

Over the weekend, dressed in his usual T-shirt and jeans, he told one reporter in Belfast there was no truth in the reports about him.

"Listen, I've been building blocks all day. Does it look as if I've been getting £80,000?''

He claimed he was particularly concerned for his family: "I'm concerned anyone would say we'd left our home. My wife is away all right she's on a pilgrimage to Fatima."

Shortly afterwards the security forces took him away for his own safety.

It has now emerged that every British Prime Minister from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair would have been familiar with intelligence files on Scappaticci's work. Known as Stakeknife, he lived at addresses in both Dublin and Belfast over the course of three decades in the IRA. His activities may have accounted for up to 40 murder victims, including other double agents and informers.

The British Government allegedly paid his wages into a secret bank account in Gibraltar for information he was able to provide as it waged its dirty war against militant republicans. The location of the offshore account is apposite, as Scappaticci's most celebrated victims may well have been the Gibraltar three Michael Farrell, Sean Savage and Danny McGinn.

They were IRA operatives in Gibraltar to carry out a bombing. But British Military Intelligence had advance knowledge and gunned them down in what became known as the infamous Death on the Rock scene.

Over the years Scappaticci killed countless others in his senior role with the so-called Nutting Squad, an IRA unit tasked with rooting out, interrogating and assassinating alleged informers within the movement. His position as an enforcer gave him almost unassailable authority within the provos, allowing Scappaticci to kill off a number of people who were either suspicious of him, or who were themselves double agents who might be in a position to reveal who he was.

In his book Killing Rage, Eamon Collins, the Provo who became one of the organisation's most vociferous critics before his former comrades murdered him in 1999, tells a story which is chillingly revealing of Scappaticci's character. Collins met him when he joined the Nutting Squad. Collins asked him if they always told people they were going to be shot.

"He (Scappaticci) turned to (the head of the Nutting Squad) and started joking about one informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty. Scap told the man that he would take him home... Scap had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as they walked away from the car.

"It was funny," he said, "watching the bastard stumbling and falling, asking me as he felt his way along the railings and walls, 'Is this my house now?' and I'd say, 'No, not yet, walk on some more...'

"... and then you shot the fucker in the back of the head,' said John Joe, and both of them burst out laughing."

In 1991, Scappaticci is believed to have been involved in the murder of County Louth farmer Tom Oliver. From the late 1980s, Oliver , a 38-year-old father of seven, was passing intelligence on the IRA in the republic to garda officers, leading to arrests of a number of senior provos. He was endangering Scappaticci, who used an IRA safe house in Co Louth to interrogate informers.

Scappaticci's handlers in the secretive British army intelligence organisation called the Force Research Unit (FRU) feared Oliver's relationship with the garda could see Scappaticci jailed in Ireland. It is alleged the FRU allowed his execution by Scappaticci's men to go ahead.

Oliver's body was discovered in a field in south Armagh in July 1991. He had been tortured before being shot six times in the head.

Ironically, the Oliver murder provoked a wave of IRA revulsion in the south, culminating in a peace rally by 4,000 people in Cooley, Dundalk. Cardinal Cathal Daly used the occasion to call for a "peace process" that would spread throughout the republic.

As the peace process developed through the 1990s, so did the investigations into Britain's dirty war with militant republicans. The murky connections linking the Oliver death to Scappaticci, his FRU handlers, and ultimately to institutionalised murder by the British military were far from being acknowledged, let alone confirmed. However, it is now acknowledged that Scappaticci was involved in the killings of loyalists, policemen, soldiers and civilians to protect his cover so he could keep passing vital intelligence.

A year after the murder of Tom Oliver, it is alleged Scappaticci was personally involved in the horrific triple murder in South Armagh of Aidan Starrs, Gregory Burns and John Dignam. All three were fellow FRU agents. Scappaticci was concerned that they might learn about his role as an FRU agent, so he executed them in his role with the Nutting Squad.

Scotland Yard chief Sir John Stevens is expected to quiz Scappaticci within days about a spate of vicious sectarian murders. Stevens, who has reported on shocking levels of FRU collusion with loyalist killers in Northern Ireland, wants to question Scappaticci about claims that innocent Catholics and other agents were murdered to protect the agent's identity.

He said: "We will be questioning Stakeknife soon. We fear other informants have been sacrificed to save him and we will be asking him about that."

The Stevens investigation began by focusing primarily on links between British forces and loyalist paramilitaries, particularly surrounding the murder of Catholic lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. But Sir John vowed to investigate FRU activities during the late 80s and early 90s after he was alerted to the identity of Stakeknife three years ago, by a former FRU soldier known as Martin Ingram.

Stevens has now learned that Mr Scappaticci's FRU handlers not only failed to prevent the violent murders of scores of IRA informants, but they are also suspected of allowing dozens of innocent people to die in order to preserve the cover of their prized spy. And given its direct involvement in the running of the FRU, MI5 must also have been complicit in Stakeknife's activities.

One of the innocent Catholics who died was Francisco Notarantonia, who was shot in his bed in 1987 by loyalist paramilitaries. They were going to target Scappaticci, but the FRU diverted the loyalists to Notarantonia, 66, instead.

This quagmire of death, double-dealing and espionage, is winding a murky thread through to the heart of the British political establishment. The fact that Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair would have all seen files on FRU collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, poses uncomfortable questions, particularly for the incumbent British Prime Minister.