Belfast’s bloodiest butcher, and a spy Britain would do ANYTHING to protect: RICHARD KAY dives into the past of the IRA torturer known as Stakeknife after his death at the age of 73
- Freddie Scappaticci, said to be Army’s top agent within Provisional IRA, has died
- Read more: Man suspected of being Britain’s top IRA spy Stakeknife has died
That he didn’t die from a bullet to the back of the head, the thrust of a knife to his heart, or was beaten to a pulp as many of his victims were, will be a consolation to his loved ones.
To those who believed the spy codenamed Stakeknife was a savage torturer responsible for some of Ulster’s bloodiest acts of retribution while also working for the British Army, it will be enough that he is dead.
As the IRA’s brutal enforcer, Freddie Scappaticci had the power of life and death over fellow paramilitaries accused of being informers.
He ran the ‘nutting squad’ that specialised in interrogating those suspected of aiding the security forces during The Troubles. They acted as judge, jury and executioner and their ‘justice’ was dispensed with a gunshot at close range to the head, hence the nut-squad nickname.
But Scappaticci, whose Italian forebears migrated to work in Northern Ireland’s mills in the 19th century, was not just the nutter-in-chief, he was also — for 25 years — one of British intelligence’s most prized assets and an informer himself. He was the key figure in the dirty war against the terror gangs and his stock-in-trade was kidnap, murder and torture.
Freddie Scappaticci, pictured in west Belfast in 2003, died several days ago aged 73
Scappaticci (circled) at an IRA funeral in 1988 with pallbearer Gerry Adams (far right)
One of the most senior British officers to serve in the Province described the man known as ‘Scap’ as ‘the jewel in the crown . . . the golden egg’ for military intelligence in the conflict between 1969 and 1997.
The announcement of his death — and details are sketchy — just hours before President Biden was due to touch down in Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement can surely not have been a coincidence.
Police, who have been investigating multiple incidents of murder and torture linked to Scappaticci and the role played by security services, including MI5, believe his death at the age of 73 might finally remove the fear many witnesses had that in testifying against him they were signing their own death warrants.
Even today, long after Stakeknife was unmasked, his capacity to inspire fear was unmatched, such was the nature of his brutality.
A speciality was extracting admissions of treachery by IRA operatives through extreme violence. Often these so-called ‘confessions’ were taped and recordings played to relatives to convince them the victim had been ‘guilty’ of treachery.
His particular brand of ruthlessness was revealed during the trial of Sinn Fein’s former publicity director Danny Morrison in 1991.
Belfast Crown Court heard how police informer Alexander Lynch was questioned by two IRA teams. Lynch testified that a man called Scappaticci had warned him ‘that if I didn’t admit to being a tout [IRA slang for informer], I’d wake up in South Armagh and he’d be able to talk to me the way he wanted, hung upside down in a cattle shed. He said it didn’t matter about me screaming because no one would be able to hear’.
As the IRA’s brutal enforcer, Scappaticci had the power of life and death over fellow paramilitaries accused of being informers. Pictured: Scappaticci in 1974
In an hour Lynch had admitted everything. He only lived to tell the tale because an Army and police unit burst into the building.
Certainly Lynch was one of the lucky ones. The nutting squad was responsible for more than 40 killings, as well as countless abductions, beatings and torture sessions. Torture techniques varied from stubbing out cigarettes on a victim’s body to branding them with hot pokers, and beating the soles of their feet.
A confession rarely saved the victim’s life — most faced the same grisly end: a single gunshot to the back of the head.
Rather than burying the corpse, Scappaticci and his men would leave the body to serve as warning to others suspected of betrayal.
Even in the blood-soaked annals of Ulster’s sectarian violence, Stakeknife was one of the cruellest and most notorious of thugs, a figure to rank alongside the wicked Shankill Butchers, the Loyalist gang that specialised in cutting the throats of their victims.
That such an evil man should be treasured by the authorities only serves to highlight the depths to which they sank in attempting to end Ulster’s cycle of violence. Intelligence chiefs say Scappaticci’s recruitment in the early 1970s was the most brilliant coup in the years of civil unrest.
It was later claimed he was ‘turned’ by an undercover British soldier following his imprisonment after the introduction of internment without trial by British authorities in 1971. He agreed to work as an agent after himself suffering an IRA punishment beating.
Scappaticci pictured at the 1987 funeral of IRA man Larry Marley
Over the years he was to become Britain’s most important spy of modern times, penetrating the IRA’s command structure and relaying priceless information to his handlers. In return he is said to have earned at least £1 million.
With Scappaticci divulging the terror group’s darkest secrets, intelligence chiefs had files on all its leading protagonists.
Scappaticci was regarded as having close associations with both Gerry Adams, the ex-Sinn Fein chief, and the late Martin McGuinness, one-time Provisional IRA commander. He is said to have provided the information that led to the Death On The Rock killings of three IRA members by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988.
READ MORE: Britain’s top IRA spy Stakeknife has died: Freddie Scappaticci, in his 70s, ‘passed away several days ago and was buried last week’ – as it emerged report into his suspected role in dozens of killings and torture during the Troubles had been delayed
But while this treasure trove was handed to the Army’s secretive Force Research Unit, allegations of state collusion with Loyalist death squads emerged. Among claims examined by police is the suggestion that innocent Roman Catholics may have been killed to prevent Stakeknife’s real identity being revealed.
Questions have also been asked about how Scappaticci the super-spy, while operating as a paid agent of the state, was allowed to commit serious crimes to bolster his fearsome reputation within the wider Republican movement.
The families of those abducted and killed by his unit — ghoulishly known as ‘the head hunters’ —claim his handlers, ie the British, could have saved their loved ones but failed to act.
They allege that the intelligence he passed about the IRA was more important to British interests than saving lives. It is this central allegation that is being investigated by Bedford’s former chief constable, Jon Boutcher.
The truth is The Troubles were a nasty conflict, mainly fought beyond the rules of normal warfare. Morality took a back seat in a battle in which both sides became masters of betrayal and blackmail. For understandable reasons, the Force Research Unit would go to any lengths to protect its key agent. If the price for that was a few innocent lives, went the thinking, it was worth paying.
Loyalist paramilitaries planned a hit to take out Scappaticci in October 1987. The FRU was alerted and, terrified of losing its star asset, is said to have engineered an alternative target, retired taxi driver Francisco Notarantonio, 66.
The British fed a tip-off naming the innocent Roman Catholic as a leading IRA operative. The Loyalists took the bait and Notarantonio was murdered in front of his grandchildren. Scappaticci lived to fight another day.
It was not until 2003 that Stakeknife was dramatically unmasked. He had consistently denied he was a spy but, with his cover blown and under an IRA death sentence, he fled Belfast for Italy.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Boutcher said his team were made aware last week of the passing of Scappaticci and were working through the implications of his death. An interim report is expected this year.
Meanwhile, there will be no hero’s send-off for Freddie Scappaticci of the kind he so often used to attend, where — for propaganda purposes — IRA men would fire a fusillade over a volunteer’s coffin.
Instead it is rumoured he may already have been buried… with his body laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
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