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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:28
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quote:
IRA agent revelations 'serious'
Revelations about the alleged activities of a senior IRA member working as a British Army agent are extremely serious, according to a senior Sinn Fein member.
The agent has been named as Freddie Scappaticci by security sources.
Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly said his party would continue to demand that the Government comes clean on its "collusion policy".
Scappaticci, codenamed Stakeknife, left Northern Ireland early on Sunday for his own safety, after he was warned on Friday that his personal security had been compromised.
He is alleged to have been involved in dozens of murders in Northern Ireland.
A team of detectives investigating collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries have said they want to question him.
The agent is believed to have been at the top of the IRA in Belfast for several decades, and worked for the Army's Force Research Unit inside the republican organisation.
Scappaticci, now in his late fifties, was described by security sources as the "jewel in the crown".
He was publicly named on Sunday morning in a number of newspapers in the UK and Ireland.
Former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre said it was "potentially devastating" for the IRA.
Mr McIntyre, who left the IRA after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, said: "If it's true that Stakeknife was the head of internal security then it's a major coup for the British.
"It would mean they have been steering republican strategy for years."
The Army has not commented on the reports, nor has anything been said by republicans.
Speaking on BBC Northern Ireland on Sunday, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said nobody in the province should be surprised by the revelations.
"We all know that the authorities try to penetrate the paramilitary organisations," he said.
"It is the key way in which the paramilitaries have been ground down and brought close to defeat in Northern Ireland.
"The authorities' job is to get intelligence, to get information, and that means turning people who are members of paramilitary organisations or finding someone who will penetrate them."
'Jewel'
A few weeks ago, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, said his team of officers - investigating collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries - was proposing to interview Scappaticci.
There have been claims that loyalists were steered by army intelligence to murder other Catholics in order to protect Scappaticci from such an assassination.
The latest reports claim he was involved in murders himself but that the security forces believe he saved many more lives.
The revelations, if proven, would be hugely damaging for the Army.
A Northern Ireland Office spokeswoman refused to discuss the disclosure.
"We wouldn't comment on anything of an intelligence or security nature," she said.
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What's with the Italian names?
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12-05-2003 13:35
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