Mick Clifford: New British law designed to cover up  Troubles' murders

Leading IRA figure Alfredo ‘Freddie’ Scappaticci, a British agent using the codename ‘Stakeknife’, is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of at least 33 people. Picture: Alan Lewis/Photopress Belfast

Every year as the turkey turns cold, the State papers are released to cast an eye on the past. So it was this year, and from the various files fell a few nuggets that told lots, not just about the past, but the present.

Publication of the State papers came in the week after the Irish Government announced it was going to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the UK from enacting its Troubles-related amnesty legislation. 

The new law is designed to prevent any further prosecutions in relation to killings during the Northern Troubles. Most observers view it as an attempt to ensure no more British soldiers are charged with illegal killings. This is opposed by all parties right across the North, who see the new law as denying justice to relatives of people who were murdered.

One element of the 30-year-long violence that has received heightened interest in recent years is that of collusion. It has emerged British security services aided and abetted loyalist gunmen to kill nationalists in far more cases than was previously thought. Sometimes the targets were involved with the Provisional IRA. Others were not but simply considered expedient for one reason or another.

Francisco Notarantonio was murdered in his bed by loyalist paramilitaries in October 1987.

One such case was that of Francisco Notarantonio, a Belfast man of Italian extraction. He was murdered in his bed by loyalist paramilitaries in October 1987. Credible allegations emerged that Mr Notarantonio was targeted after security services passed his name onto the loyalist paramilitary entity, the UDA.

At the time, the UDA had planned to murder Freddie Scappaticci, a leading IRA figure, who was also a British agent using the codename Stakeknife. The British diverted the UDA from this in order to protect Scappaticci. 

Instead, they pointed the loyalists towards the innocent Mr Notarantonio on the basis he and Scap were both of Italian extraction. The plot was cold, twisted, and indicative of the willingness of a sovereign state to collude and even orchestrate the murder of its own citizens, including in this case a man who was completely innocent. Scapaticci was uncovered as a British agent in 2003.

State papers released last week show officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs met members of the Notarantonio family in 2001, who were attempting to uncover the truth about their father’s murder. 

“A senior police officer confirmed in late 2000 that Stakeknife was a real person and had colluded in the death of an innocent Belfast man,” according to a memo as reported in The Irish Times. 

“This was done ostensibly to prevent himself from being unmasked.” The innocent man referenced was Mr Notarantonio.

Scappatticci’s role in the IRA was to torture and execute informers. He is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of at least 33 people in this respect. Some of those who died were not informers at all and in most cases, Scapatticci is understood to have told his British handlers about an imminent execution. 

An investigation into Scappatticci’s activities reported last month that criminal cases would not now be brought against a number of individuals, including former British security personnel and former members of the IRA. 

In light of what is emerging about the level of depravity deployed by the British forces, it is entirely proper that the Irish Government tries to halt the amnesty legislation.

Bad and all as the Brits were, their actions need to be seen in light of what they were up against. The Provisional IRA was fighting to impose a 32-county socialist Republic on the island. Their tactic was to kill anybody whose death might advance that cause and spread terror through bombing public spaces. 

Contrary to the retro republican chic line that is put about today, they were not defending nationalists in the North. Nationalists accounted for more than 400 of the 1,700 deaths for which the Provos were responsible.

By the early ’90s, the end was in sight for the Provos’ redundant cause. A ceasefire was in the offing. One of the State papers released over Christmas was a British government memo dating from December 1993 which assessed the mood within the Provos for an end to the killing. 

Caroline Moreland, a 34-year-old Catholic single mother of three, was murdered by the IRA in 1994.

It concluded there was “close to a 50/50 split” among what were classified as volunteers over whether to call a halt. The delicate balance within the Provos, as evidenced by the memo, gives further ballast to a theory around one of the most shocking killings committed at the time.

Caroline Moreland was a 34-year-old Catholic single mother of three living in Belfast in 1994. She allowed her house to be used for Provo meetings and in June of that year, the security services found an Armalite there.

“They [the special branch] told me that I would go away for at least 25 years and that my children would be taken off me and put in care of social services. It was at this point I agreed to work for them,” Ms Moreland related in a subsequent tape recording.

In early July she was arrested by the IRA and taken to the border where she was questioned for 15 days. Some reports suggest she was tortured.

As former IRA man Richard O’Rawe describes in his recent book on Stakeknife, Ms Moreland’s fate was in the balance. A ceasefire was imminent. She had agreed to work for the British under severe pressure and did so for a matter of weeks. What would be the point of killing her? O’Rawe quotes veteran journalist Ed Maloney’s thesis on the decision on whether she should live or die.

“Her fate was debated at a meeting in July of the IRA’s army council, where the chairman at the time was Martin McGuinness. There was no disagreement about her fate. She would die for the moment of weakness because to let her go would send a wrong message to an IRA grassroots already uneasy about the talk of ceasefires and sell-outs.”

Her body was found on July 17 near Roslea in Co Fermanagh, six weeks before the ceasefire. The hard men had to be shown that the leadership wasn’t going soft and killing a young woman at this late stage of the conflict was the perfect example. Her life was putty in the hands of the Provos, just as Mr Notarantonio’s was for the security services.

The British are anxious there be no more prosecutions against people responsible for deaths like that of Mr Notarantonio. Sinn Féin has no interest in seeing anybody prosecuted for deaths like that of Ms Moreland.

Both entities could do much to alleviate the pain of the bereaved but their respective priorities don’t allow them to do so. 

In that light, it is difficult to take seriously Sinn Féin’s opposition to the amnesty legislation. They want to ensure there is no amnesty for British soldiers, but somehow believe that killing done by the Provos was justified and should not be subject to criminal prosecution.