IRA informer unreliable, claims former MI5 officer

DISGRACED former MI5 officer David Shayler claimed yesterday that he was told an IRA informer who alleged Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness told him he fired the first shot on Bloody Sunday was a “bullshitter”.

Mr Shayler, aged 37, told the Saville Inquiry in London that when he worked for MI5 in the 1990s another officer told him the informer, known only as Infliction, was not reliable.

Mr Shayler was sentenced to six months in jail last year after he was convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act by disclosing information to a national newspaper.