After seven years, 1,000 witness statements, 50,000 pages of evidence and £40m, the police inquiry known as Operation Kenova has resulted in zero prosecutions.
That blunt fact hangs over the publication of the inquiry’s long-awaited interim report into Stakeknife, the codename of a top British agent in the IRA who was responsible for multiple murders during Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
Having failed to deliver justice to victims’ relatives, the question is whether the report can at least shed light on the dark life of Freddie Scappaticci, the man widely believed to be Stakeknife, and his tangled relationship with Britain’s intelligence services.
In one of the most disturbing chapters of the Troubles, it is alleged that state representatives let Scappaticci, an IRA commander, orchestrate dozens of murders of fellow republicans from the 1970s to the 1990s.
To his comrades the Belfast native was the feared head of the “nutting squad”, an IRA internal security unit that hunted and executed suspected informants. To his British handlers Scappaticci was the “golden egg” who produced priceless counter-terrorism intelligence that helped to neuter the IRA and save lives.
It was a moral murk – lives taken versus lives saved – and now, decades later, the Kenova report is tasked with delivering a reckoning. It has been a slow, zigzag process that led to the report finding that more lives were probably lost than saved.
Scappaticci, the son of Italian immigrants, joined the nascent Provisional IRA in 1969 before turning against his comrades and offering his services to the British in the mid-1970s, launching a double-life as a traitor while rising up the ranks of the murderous nutting squad.
Ian Hurst, a military intelligence whistleblower, helped media organisations to out Scappaticci as Stakeknife in 2003. The stocky part-time bricklayer denied it but fled to England and entered witness protection with the lucrative earnings from his services to British intelligence.
He was said to be directly linked to 18 murders of IRA members, with his mole-hunting unit believed responsible for more than 30 killings, the vast majority while Scappaticci was working for the military’s Force Research Unit, which fed information to MI5 and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Sir John Wilsey, the general officer commanding the British army in Northern Ireland between 1983 and 1990, described Stakeknife as the “golden egg” and “jewel in the crown” of military intelligence.
The IRA’s army council falsely believed it oversaw the mole-hunting unit, said Richard O’Rawe, a former IRA member-turned writer who published a book, Stakeknife’s Dirty War, last year. “But it wasn’t them in charge. It was British intelligence,” he said.
In 2015 Northern Ireland’s director of public prosecutions urged the Police Service of Northern Ireland to examine the roles of Stakeknife and his handlers in the killing of suspected informants. The PSNI outsourced the investigation to a 50-strong team of detectives led by Jon Boutcher, a former Bedfordshire police chief constable.
Operation Kenova launched in June 2016 with high hopes it would penetrate a fog of secrets guarded by the IRA and the intelligence services to deliver justice to the families of those interrogated, shot and dumped by Scappaticci’s unit. Not all the victims were in fact “touts” but the stigma over informing compounded families’ grief.
The inquiry team won the support of victims’ families, arrested and questioned former members of the IRA and security forces, obtained access to intelligence files and pressed MI5 and other agencies for more information.
Results, however, proved elusive. In 2019 Kenova gave Northern Ireland prosecutors files of evidence relating to Scappaticci and intelligence operatives. In 2020 prosecutors decided to not press charges against four individuals, including two former members of the security forces.
In an announcement in December prosecutors, citing lack of evidence, said 16 people named in the files, including ex-IRA members and security force personnel, will not face charges. Last week in a fresh announcement it said 12 other people would not face charges meaning that none of the 28 files submitted by Operation Kenova to prosecutors have led to prosecutions.
Scappaticci, it is understood, refused to cooperate with investigators, hampering evidence-gathering. The Kenova team announced his death last April at the age of 77. Investigators also faced headwinds from the government’s conditional amnesty offer to former security force personnel and paramilitaries in so-called legacy legislation.
In the report Boucher said he estimated the number of lives saved as a result of intelligence provided by Stakeknife was in the high single figures or low double figures and “nowhere near” the hundreds that have been claimed.
“Crucially this is not a net estimate because it does not take account of the lives lost as a consequence of Stakeknife’s continued operation as an agent,” he added.
“And, from what I have seen, I think it probable that this resulted in more lives being lost than saved.
“Furthermore, there were undoubtedly occasions when Stakeknife ignored his handlers, acted outside his tasking and did things he should not have done and when very serious risks were run.”
O’Rawe, speaking in advance of Kenova’s report, gave a withering verdict on the inquiry. “What did it achieve? Nothing. The whole rationale was prosecutions. I think Boutcher was well-meaning but he was on a hiding to nothing,” he said.
The current head of Operation Kenova, Sir Iain Livingstone – he succeeded Boutcher, who became head of the PSNI – acknowledged disappointment at the lack of prosecutions in December but affirmed “absolute determination to deliver the truth”.
Victims’ relatives and their lawyers will scour the report for details about tasking and coordinating groups (TCGs) that supervised intelligence operations. There is speculation some may sue former members of TCGs.
Hurst, the whistleblower who was a former member of the Force Research Unit, told the Guardian last year he did not entirely blame the man widely known as “Scap”. “He was allowed to be a mass murderer and the controlling mind was the state,” Hurst said.
