The final report into the British army/MI5 agent known as Stakeknife once again illustrated how during the Troubles the lives of some people were viewed as expendable by representatives of the British state.
The Operation Kenova report published on Tuesday stated bluntly: “Time and time again, it would appear that protecting the agent outweighed protecting the life of a victim or protecting the right of their families to see justice for the crimes committed against their loved one.”
There was a farcical element to the launch of the report in that the head of Kenova, Iain Livingstone could not identify Stakeknife even though to use a Belfastism, and a reference cited in the document, “the dogs in the street” know he was Freddie Scappaticci, who died two years ago.
Belfast solicitor Kevin Winters representing a number of the families whose relatives were tortured and murdered by the IRA’s internal security unit, known as the Nutting Squad, is spearheading a legal action to overturn the neither confirm, nor deny (NCND) policy that is preventing Scappaticci officially being named as Stakeknife.
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Naming Scappaticci is important to the families but it is not the key point: what chillingly is reinforced in this report and what was clear from the interim Kenova report published last year is that no one from the IRA who carried out the killings of alleged informants, nor anyone from the British army or MI5 who permitted some of these crimes, will face charges. As one senior source predicted two years ago: “The men in dark suits in Whitehall and the men in dark balaclavas in west Belfast won’t be made to pay.”
Scappaticci, as a senior member and later as head of the Nutting Squad, was linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions. More people died than were saved by him. Scappaticci was run by the British army’s secretive Force Research Unit (FRU) but this latest Kenova report disclosed that MI5 was involved in “briefing and tasking Stakeknife” via the FRU throughout his “operation as an agent”. He was a spy from the late 1970s until at least the early 1990s. Previously it said its role with Stakeknife was “peripheral”.
It is hard to quibble with the observation by Kevin Winters that Kenova “opened up a Pandora’s Box on MI5 security service oversight and control over life and death during the conflict” and that any suggestion that it was “some sort of distant honest broker in the labyrinthine world of intelligence and agent handling well and truly consigned to history”.
Northern Secretary Hilary Benn said this week that the use of agents is now “subject to strict regulation” but it is still clear that Kenova raises real questions about the British government’s commitment to providing truth – and the possibility of justice - as promised in the latest legacy legislation currently making its way through Westminster.
