Carlos FresnedaLondon Correspondent

London Correspondent

Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-00:02

  • Wide angle The long shadow of the return of violence in Northern Ireland, 25 years later

  • Profile Michelle O'Neill, the daughter of the IRA prisoner who took political action

The story of Freddie Scappaticci would have been enough for a

John le Carré

novel .

Born in Belfast in 1946, the son of Italian immigrants, he stood out as a footballer in his adolescence and came to cherish the dream of signing for Nottingham Forest.

He ended up working in a brick factory and ended up throwing them at the police as soon as the conflict in Northern Ireland started.

He was arrested along with dozens of others suspected of causing disturbances in the so-called

Operation Demetrius

, spent a few months in prison (along with Gerry Adams, among others) and joined the Provisional IRA upon his release.

In the 1980s he was a member of the Internal Security Unit, known as

the crazy squad

, whose mission was to discover, interrogate, torture and, where appropriate, eliminate informants infiltrated into the terrorist organization.

Around the same time, he was captured by the British Army for the Force Research Unit (FRU), a spy agency created precisely to access information on the activities of the IRA.

So for more than a decade he was

the most coveted mole infiltrated into the terrorist organization

, known by the code name

Stakeknife

.

His simultaneous roles as

an informant

(for the British Government) and as an

informant hunter

(for the IRA) served for years to forge his legend and attribute to him the

saving of hundreds of lives

, thanks to internal information about preparations for kidnappings or attacks.

Once his mission as a double agent was completed - although he always denied having been

Stakeknife

- he retired in the 90s and had special protection for his services.

Although things began to get complicated for Scappaticci following an interview on ITV, recorded without his authorization, in which he accused

Martin McGuinness

of murder , one of the architects of the

Good Friday Peace Agreement

who would end up being Ireland's deputy chief minister. from North.

Scotland Yard, for its part, opened an investigation into the death of a Protestant student and attempted to summon Scappaticci as a witness.

In 2018 he was arrested, accused of murder and kidnapping, but was released on bail and spent three months in jail, after pleading "guilty" to possession of

"extreme pornographic material"

(read zoophilia).

He died on April 11, 2023, at age 77.

And finally, a year after his death, details emerge about the true achievements of Agent

Stakeknife

, contained in a 208-page volume as the conclusion of the so-called

Operation Kenova

.

The post-mortem

investigation implicates him

in at least 14 murders and 15 kidnappings, and concludes that his work may have cost more lives than he saved.

"Reports that

Stakeknife

saved hundreds of lives are speculative and unreliable," testified Northern Irish Police Chief Commissioner

Jon Boutcher

, who openly questioned "the morality and legality" of the double agent's activities in the service of the State.

"Something like this would not be tolerated today," Boutcher concluded.

"Department of the Interior guidelines do not allow an officer to participate in the planning or execution of crimes."

The truth about the

Scappaticci case

(his real name does not even appear in the report) has in any case removed the

ghosts of the Northern Ireland conflict

.