“Stakeknife,” the highest-ranking British military spy placed within the Irish Republican Army, who has been linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions, may have cost more lives than he saved during the Northern Ireland Troubles, an interim report released Friday by a group of independent investigators found. It is widely believed that Stakeknife’s true identity was Freddie Scappaticci, as alleged by the Sunday Herald in 2003. The report, released by Operation Kenova, is unable to comment on any allegations about his identity or specifics about his criminal activity that may bias the upcoming prosecution decisions from the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland, although report author Jon Boutcher expects the government to authorise the confirmation of Stakeknife’s identity in the final edition.
One of the key arguments levied by the report claims that the “unreliable” claims from the British Army’s Force Research Unit that Stakeknife saved “countless” or “hundreds” of lives are exaggerated. It highlights that, logically, an agent can provide much valuable information over a long time, but if that information is acted on too often, the agent would “invariably… [be put] under suspicion and lead to their compromise and withdrawal.” It also questions the means of these estimates to demonstrate that it is impossible to adequately quantify the number of lives saved by one agent as there are too many variables. From here stems the claim that “it [is] probable that this resulted in more lives being lost than saved.” The report acknowledged that the conditions under the Troubles were extremely challenging and ineffectively legally constrained. However, it found that UK intelligence agencies were aware of many imminent murders, kidnappings and tortures and failed to protect those at risk in order to protect the identities of agents such as Stakeknife.
Furthermore, the report points out a “culture of non-disclosure,” of obfuscating and avoiding independent investigations into the Troubles and different agencies’ roles. Operation Kenova aims to “apply transparency wherever possible with a focus upon, and due consideration towards, the victims and families of the offences being investigated.” Aligning with this, the report focuses much of its attention on the impact Stakeknife’s activities, and the legacy surrounding them, have had on the families of the victims.
The recommendations at the end of the report include a call for both the UK Government and the republican leadership to apologise to the bereaved families and surviving victims.
The Kenovo Victim Focus Group, established in the early stages of the Operation, released a statement saying that it “welcomes and supports the publication of the interim report'”
Freddie Scappaticci was a member of the IRA in the 1970s and was allegedly recruited as an agent by the Army near the end of that decade, and the report finds ‘strong evidence [that he committed] very serious criminality’. The Public Prosecution Service was considering charging Scappaticci after he lost a legal bid to force British ministers to publicly clear him of the allegations of being a double agent when he died in 2023 at 77. No prosecutions will follow as a result of the report.
The Troubles was a period of sectarian conflict lasting from 1969 to 1998 between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland, with both political and religious elements. It ended with the 1988 Good Friday Agreement, creating a system of shared governance.
