Table Of ContentHe did the IRA's dirty work for 25 years - and
was paid £80,000 a year by the government
Man revealed as army agent may be connected to 40 murders
Rosie Cowan, Ireland correspondent
Monday May 12, 2003
The Guardian
Even to his fellow IRA men, shocked at the revelations of the traitor in their midst, Alfredo
'Scap' Scappaticci has a fearsome reputation as a ruthless psychopath.
In his book, Killing Rage, Eamon Collins, the Provo who became one of the organisation's
most vociferous critics before his former comrades murdered him in 1999, tells a revealing
story.
Collins met him when he joined the Provisionals' internal security unit, known as the "Nutting
Squad". Scappaticci was a senior figure, responsible for sniffing out and killing informers.
Collins asked him if they always told people they were going to be shot.
"He [Scappaticci] turned to [the head of the Nutting Squad] and started joking about one
informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty. Scap told the man that he
would take him home... Scap had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as
they walked away from the car.
"'It was funny,' he said, 'watching the bastard stumbling and falling, asking me as he felt his
way along the railings and walls, 'Is this my house now?' and I'd say, 'No, not yet, walk on
some more...'
"'... and then you shot the fucker in the back of the head,' said John Joe, and both of them
burst out laughing."
Yesterday, as west Belfast reeled from the news that Scappaticci and the British army agent
known as Stakeknife were one and the same, an IRA source said: "He was the bogeyman
of the IRA: judge, jury and executioner. He didn't have to attend brigade meetings. He didn't
get involved in the politics or talking. But whenever something went wrong, Freddy
Scappaticci was sent for."
But this man, entrusted by the IRA army council with a crucial role, was in fact the British
army's most precious asset at the heart of the republican movement for a quarter of a
century.
Republicans refused to comment publicly, but some the Guardian spoke to said that while
they had been taken unawares by the news, strange things down the years were now falling
into place about the man alleged to have betrayed them.
The greater irony, however, was that Stakeknife, paid £80,000 a year by the government,
might be connected to 40 murders of loyalists, republicans, police officers and civilians.
Many of those killed had nothing to do with terrorism, and dozens may have died to keep
him alive.
The extent to which some members of the security forces went to allow terrorist spies like
Stakeknife to operate unimpeded could prove the most chilling revelation to date to plumb
the murky depths and moral ambiguities of the "dirty war" in Northern Ireland.
"The Brits were basically playing God, deciding who Scap could get rid of and who could be
killed to save him," said one security source. "If there was an IRA man they needed to get
rid of, or another agent past his sell-by date, Scap did the dirty work."
Friendship
Alfredo Scappaticci, small, barrel-chested with classic Mediterranean olive skin and wiry
black hair, was born to an Italian immigrant family in west Belfast in the late 1940s and
became a bricklayer.
His family, who live in Andersonstown, are staunch republicans; Scappaticci was interned in
the Long Kesh prison camp in 1971. One of his fellow internees was Gerry Adams, the Sinn
Fein president, with whom he formed a firm friendship, acting as one of his bodyguards in
the late 1980s.
He is also close to Brian Keenan and Brian Gillen, whom security sources say are members
of the IRA army council along with Mr Adams.
Scappattici was a low-level IRA member in the 1970s, but an incident in 1978 was to
change his life, with devastating consequences for his terrorist colleagues. After a row with
a senior Provo, he was subjected to a severe punishment beating, which so enraged him
that he marched straight into an army barracks - what military intelligence call a "walk-in" -
and offered his services.
The Force Research Unit (FRU), the army's shadowy spy wing, could not believe their luck,
and before long they had engineered Scappaticci's "promotion" to a senior role in the
Nutting Squad, where he not only interrogated, tortured and killed suspected informers but
vetted hundreds of would-be recruits to decide if they were suitable IRA material.
A team of soldiers with a fleet of vehicles at their disposal were kept busy protecting him
and analysing the information he provided.
Army sources insisted that Stakeknife saved lives and foiled IRA atrocities, and his legend
has grown such that he is credited with involvement in nearly every big security operation in
the past 25 years.
He is said to have passed on the details, which led to the SAS ambush in Gibraltar in which
three IRA volunteers, Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Danny McCann, were killed in
1988, and to have given vital information about IRA targeting of British military installations
in Germany.
In 1990, he is alleged to have set up the arrest of the former Sinn Fein publicity director,
Danny Morrison, by leading police to a west Belfast house where Scappaticci was
interrogating an IRA informer.
Innocent lives were lost protecting Scappaticci. In October 1987, Francisco Notarantonio,
66, was shot dead by loyalists who were steered towards him to prevent Scappaticci being
killed.
In 1991, Scappaticci is said to have been behind the murder of Thomas Oliver, a farmer
from Co Louth, in the Irish Republic, who was also informing on the IRA to the Irish police.
In 1992, he is alleged to have played a key role in the torture and murder of three other FRU
agents, Aidan Starrs, Gregory Burns and John Dignam.
The three men killed Burns' girlfriend, Margaret Perry, because they feared she would
expose them as intelligence agents. But a few days after her body was found, their
mutilated bodies were dumped on a border road.
All three had been stripped naked and shot twice in the head. Cigarettes had been stubbed
out on Burns' thigh and there was a poker burn on Starrs' arm. A letter from Dignam to his
pregnant wife was read at his funeral.
It said: "I have only a matter of hours to live. I only wish I could see you and the kids one
last time, but as you know, this is not possible."
Things started to get hot for Scappaticci when Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police
commissioner who has been probing security force collusion with terrorists for more than 14
years, revealed that he knew of his existence, and just a few weeks ago, confirmed for the
first time that he intended to question him. Sir John's inquiry could prove devastating, not
only for Scappaticci but for his army handlers.
Yesterday, after the army had spirited Scappaticci away to England the blinds were still
drawn in his west Belfast home and a woman shouted through the door, telling reporters
who called to get lost. Bobby Storey, whom security sources say is the Provisionals' head of
intelligence, lives a few doors away from the Scappaticci family.
Although Scappaticci had accumulated a vast amount of money from the government,
sources said most of it is lying untouched in a Gibraltar bank account. It would be difficult for
him to spend it without attracting the attention of his IRA colleagues and west Belfast
neighbours.
But security sources who know Scappaticci do not believe money was his prime motivator.
"He started out looking for revenge and got caught up in the whole game," said one. "He's a
vicious bastard who got addicted to the whole adrenalin rush; and who knows now if he will
ever get to spend his cash?"
