Adams: Come clean on spying activity

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams tonight demanded that the British Government come clean about all its operations in Northern Ireland amid the ongoing Stakeknife spy controversy.

As he broke his silence about allegations that West Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci was the army’s top spy inside the IRA, Mr Adams also accused journalists of being conned by the claims.

He told republicans at a hunger strike commemoration rally in the city that so-called securocrats had predicted an “avalanche of spin” since the suspected spy’s identity was exposed.

The West Belfast MP said: “Were the losers the IRA or the British Government? The losers were the media because, in an unquestioning way, they took a line from faceless people who have given us killings on Bloody Sunday in Derry, on the New Lodge Road in Belfast, who have actively manipulated and armed and directed unionist paramilitaries over the decades to kill republicans, to kill nationalists, and when they couldn’t kill us, they killed whatever Catholic that got in the way.”

Mr Scappaticci has rejected the allegations that he informed on the Provisionals to his military handlers within the shadowy Force Research Unit.

Even though he has admitted to being in the republican movement until 13 years ago, the 57-year-old builder insisted he had never provided any intelligence. Security sources have stressed that he is Stakeknife, but Sinn Fein, at least publicly, has declared it has no reason to doubt him.

Mr Adams said instead that it was time the spotlight was turned on the authorities in London.

He added: “The British Government need to be brought to the point of publicly disclosing what they have been doing in our country for the last 30 years, and of publicly outlining the methods, the techniques, and the lengths that they have gone to, to try to suppress us.”