TEXT:

Lives were sacrificed to protect a top agent at the heart of the IRA, a £40m inquiry into the mole and his handlers has found.

Operation Kenova spent seven years investigating the role of Freddie Scappaticci - the IRA agent known as ‘Stakeknife’ - and his British Army handlers.

It investigated 101 murders and abductions.

The Operation Kenova report, which was published this morning, found that lives could have been saved by the intelligence he provided.

In some cases the intelligence was not passed on or properly assessed. In others, the security forces decided against intervening because it would have compromised or exposed an informer.

“Some of these cases were uniquely challenging for the security forces to deal with,” the report says.

Intelligence officers had to assess risks in short time with limited information and in the knowledge that protecting one person might expose another.

“Mistakes and questionable decisions were inevitable and understandable,” it says.

"However whatever the circumstances, each case should have been and should still be, the subject of independent investigation, and if appropriate, adjudication.

"We have encountered cases in which, because of secrecy, no such process took place at the time.

"It is unacceptable that due to information being classified as ‘secret’ or above, these cases were denied meaningful investigation and scrutiny.

“This position is no longer sustainable.”

The report identified cases where an agent had murdered another agent, where an agent had operated contrary to instructions, and in situations where they could arguably have been said to be acting in the interests of the state.

In some cases people murdered as informers had not been agents at all.

The report is also highly critical of the IRA. It said it had been responsible for “torture, inhumane and degrading treatment and murder, including of children, vulnerable adults, those with learning difficulties and those who were entirely innocent of the claims made against them.”

People had been murdered because of hierarchical disputes within the organisation, because of clashes over the proceeds of criminal enterprises and even to facilitate extra-marital affairs.

The report contains calls for formal apologies from both the British government and the republican leadership.

There had been speculation that Scappaticci’s name would not be mentioned in the report.

It is in it, including confirmation that he had been arrested in the course of the Operation Kenova inquiry.

There is confirmation too that he had been found to be in possession of 329 images of an extreme pornographic nature - an offence to which he subsequently pleaded guilty.

Freddie Scappaticci died in 2023 aged 77. The Kenova Inquiry said it had debunked conspiracy theories that he was still alive and said that he died of natural causes after an illness.

The report says “strong evidence” was presented to prosecutors of “very serious criminality” on the part of Scappaticci.

“We first attempted to submit these in October 2019 and it will never be known whether an earlier decision on them by the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland would have resulted in prosecution and if so, conviction,” the report said.

It is understood those files linked Scappaticci to 14 murders and 15 other abductions.

The prosecution of Freddie Scappaticci would have been “in the interests of victims, families and justice,” Jon Boutcher, who ran the inquiry, said.

The report does not confirm that Scappaticci was the agent known as ‘Stakeknife’, but it said the truth about the agents identity will have to be confirmed at some point and that it will be addressed in the final report.

‘Stakeknife’

It said it was widely reported that security forces had a well placed agent codenamed ‘Stakenife’ in the IRA’s Internal Security Unit and publicly alleged that Freddie Scappaticci was the agent in question.

It said it was a matter of public record that a number of allegations falling within Operations Kenova’s Terms of Reference were directed against Scappaticci, but that he died last March without ever being charged or convicted of any Troubles-related offences and always denied any wrongdoing or involvement with the security forces

The report states: "The security forces and the government have steadfastly refused to confirm or deny the allegations that Mr Scappaticci was an agent or that he was Stakeknife and, regardless of their truth or falsity, these allegations put Mr Scappaticci’s life at such risk that he was forced to leave Northern Ireland many years before his death.

"The truth about the identity of Stakeknife will have to be officially confirmed at some point, but I [Jon Boutcher] am not able to address it in this interim report and will have to leave this to my final report.

“That report will confirm the truth and set out the full facts and I am confident that publication will benefit and not harm the public interest. For now, it suffices to say that Mr Scappaticci was and still is inextricably bound up with and a critical person of interest at the heart of Operation Kenova.”

In his report, Mr Boutcher says its likely more lives were lost as a result of ‘Stakeknife’s’ activities than were saved.

The report estimates that lives saved numbered between "high single figures and low double figures - nowhere near the hundreds sometimes claimed, which he referred to as being rooted in “fairy tales”.

“Crucially, this is not a net estimate because it does not take account of the lives lost as a consequence of Stakeknife’s continued operation as an agent and, from what I have seen, I think it probable that this resulted in more lives being lost than saved.”

Mr Boutcher’s report is highly critical of the UK government policy of neither confirming nor denying an agent’s identity.

“Some of those accused by PIRA of being agents did assist the security forces, but others did not,” the report says.

"Those people who did assist the authorities in tackling the threat from terrorism by working as agents did so at great personal risk.

"Those who recruited and handled them, the security forces within which they worked and the wider government owed them duty of care that was all too often ignored. These individuals would surely have expected the agencies they were working for to at least try to protect them and to bring to justice anyone who harmed or killed them.

“On too many occasions such protection was not afforded.”

‘Not right for the Government to comment’

In a statement following publication of the report, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, said: "As this is an ‘interim’ report, I will not comment at this time on behalf of the Government on the detail of the report.

"It contains several specific, very serious allegations that remain subject to consideration by the courts.

"It would not be right for the Government to make any comment on the substance of the Interim Report until the conclusion of litigation related to it.

"I note the recent decisions made by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland in relation to files passed to them by Operation Kenova, which once again go to show how difficult it is to achieve criminal justice outcomes in legacy cases.

"Due to numerous related civil cases, however, that remain ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time. There is also the prospect of appeals against any of the recent decisions made by the Director for Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland.

“I would like to put on record again my deepest sympathy with all the families who lost loved ones during the Troubles - including as a result of the actions of the Provisional IRA.”

Informers failed by security services

The report details a number of examples in which the security services failed the informers who had been working for them.

On one occasion the IRA abducted a man. Intelligence was passed about where he was being held. It was not passed on to protect an informant and the victim was murdered.

Another victim was shot and the body secretly dumped. His family spent years trying to find him. Within days of the killing the security forces had intelligence about the murder, but the family were never told and there was no murder investigation.

The report notes an example where the security forces became aware that an agent had been compromised, but they did not tell him. He was only advised there was a general informer hunt going on within the IRA and he should be vigilant. He was subsequently abducted by the IRA and shot dead.

There was criticism too of the time taken by an under-resourced PPS in Northern Ireland’s to make decisions on files submitted to it.

Mr Boutcher in part attributed this to the UK government policy of neither confirming nor denying an agent’s identity - the so called NCND policy.

"When my team have examined agent related cases, they have often found a rich and actionable evidential picture, with many naming those involved, and yet there have been no convictions in connection with these murders.

“It is of significant concern that despite the authorities having gathered considerable intelligence, no convictions have been achieved. This strongly indicates failings by the authorities and is, in my opinion, linked to the dogmatic application of the NCND policy. Not only does this prevent disclosure of information to families, when applied internally to investigators, as it has been, it means that legacy investigations have not had relevant material disclosed to them.”

Concern was also raised about the “glacially slow” pace with which prosecution decisions had been reached.

"Some of the key participants to such proceedings, the victims, their families and witnesses are in the sunset of their lives and their health and well-being must be taken into account. At present, legacy cases can be expected to take five years to come to a mean