Protecting Britain’s Deep State
Some reflections on John Ware’s series, by Brian Walker…
John Ware has form as a leading investigator into the Troubles for BBC Panorama, including the Stakeknife record and responsibility for the Omagh bomb. His relentless account in the Irish News of the lengths to which the British state was prepared to go to deny the identity of Freddie Scapatticci as Stakeknife has an added significance beyond filling in the details. The fact that his well placed legal sources were prepared to talk in a generally conservative environment speaks volumes. Ware's account depicts MI5 becoming increasingly isolated among establishment players as holding the veto on a blanket Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) policy on the role of Scapatticci as Stakeknife. This was despite it being common knowledge to those acute observers, "the dogs in the street".
Ware's account of Scapatticci defying both the state and the IRA to out him as Stakeknife is as bizarre and gripping as anything produced about spying and betrayal during the Cold War. It has the added dimension of how he gave the state including the judiciary the run around in order to stay living in Belfast for years inviolate, unlike other ‘eminences’ such as Denis Donaldson in 2006.
Scap got the timing right. For the IRA to execute him when the " Stakeknife" scandal broke in 2003 would have harmed their transition in the peace process. And for the state to have challenged his denial as Stakeknife in court would have confirmed their belief in his true identity. Did he, I wonder, think it all up on his own or did he have advisers?
Scapatticci's death in 2023 removed one plank of the government's denial.
But Scap has an afterlife in the form of Operation Kenova instigated by the present Chief Constable Jon Boucher. Boucher is openly scathing about Stakeknife's value as an agent saving" "hundreds of lives " But Kenova has so far been prevented by MI5 from sharing with families the details of evidence of his guilt as an IRA executioner and the repeated unsuccessful attempts to prosecute him which Ware describes as " an elaborate legal charade". MI5's veto seems have been endorsed by the Public Prosecution Service against the recommendations of the PSNI.
While the PPS knew Scapatticci was committing perjury by swearing he was not Stakeknife, they accepted he did so in order to stay alive in Belfast.
Ware also questions PPS decisions not to prosecute Scapatticci for 15 murders identified by the Stevens inquiries and a further 32 cases in 50,000 pages of evidence submitted by Kenova. Perhaps it revived the old dilemma; prosecuting him would acknowledge he was in fact Stakeknife.
Boucher breaks ranks: will others follow?
State ranks have been broken by Chief Constable Boucher. While he and his successor as head of Kenova "militantly favour" NCND they insist it is too widely drawn.
How does the state overcome MI5's alleged claim that abandonment of NCND over collusion/handling informers would create a precedent for today?
The Troubles were an internal not an international conflict that is mainly over. Even seasoned operatives, lawyers and police officers familiar with inside stories now favour disclosure where human life is no longer at risk. We should know what there is to know not only about those who pulled the trigger but others higher up who pulled the strings. Perhaps there is even less to know than the sternest critics of collusion believe and a gaping vacuum awaits discovery, perhaps carefully engineered for deniability. By contrast revived tensions with Russia and China are in many ways a resumption of the Cold War where familiar rules apply. Yet even here MI5 and MI6 have been happy to disclose new Cold War stories about how close we came to nuclear confrontation. Ware presents a formidable list of Cold War revelations. Surely it's worth taking far lesser risks over the Troubles.
Where a legal position becomes out of line with acknowledged facts, it becomes untenable. The new or amended Legacy Act will be a failure unless it contains appropriate new protocols for what constitutes "national security" in the Northern Ireland of today.
Brian Walker
Latest Scappaticci revelations are in ‘public inquiry terrain’
Connla Young Crime and Security Correspondent, Irish News, March 26th, 2025
A SOLICITOR for 21 families linked to a high-profile investigation into the activities of British agent Freddie Scappaticci believes a public inquiry may be needed.
Kevin Winters was speaking after The Irish News revealed the details behind a sham legal action taken by Scappaticci to try and hide his role as the agent Stakeknife.
Scappaticci, a former commander of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit (ISU), was named as a British army agent by the media in 2003.
Also known as the ‘nutting squad’, the ISU was responsible for hunting down and killing informers.
While Scappaticci worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), it was recently revealed he was instructed by the intelligence agency via his military handlers.
Scappaticci’s activities have been investigated by Operation Kenova, which was set up in 2016 and published an interim report last year.
In a special Irish News investigation this week, journalist John Ware set out the circumstances where Scappaticci perjured himself in court but wasn’t prosecuted for it.
After initially turning down an MI5 resettlement offer, Scappaticci launched a bogus legal challenge against a British government position to Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) he was the agent Stakeknife.
The agent calculated he could use the courts to convince the IRA and the wider public he was not Stakeknife.
He later falsely swore on oath that he was not a security force agent.
Freddie Scappaticci led the IRA’s Internal Security Unit and was also a British agent
The office of the Lady Chief Justice, Siobhan Keegan, was asked if she had any response to this week’s revelations.
A spokeswoman said: “The Lady Chief Justice’s Office said it cannot comment on individual cases.”
In total 28 files, accusing 32 people, were submitted by the Kenova team to the PPS in evidence.
In each case a decision was taken not to prosecute.
Perjury and perverting course of justice
Scappaticci was also investigatzed by Operation Kenova for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
In 2020 the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Belfast ruled there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him – a decision Operation Kenova strongly objected to.
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Herron has explained that NCND prevented him from elaborating about his reasons for not prosecuting Scappaticci beyond those he gave in a press release.
The PPS has also rejected evidence submitted in 17 prosecution files relating to 12 military intelligence personnel and 16 republicans allegedly involved in the execution and abduction of agents.
Operation Kenova says that the evidence in ten prosecution files showing Scappaticci’s own involvement in 14 murders and 15 abductions was “strong and compelling”.
In March last year, Operation Kenova published a detailed interim report with a final document yet to be made public.
Piles of documents suppressed
It emerged last year that hundreds of pages of information were suppressed by MI5 before the interim report was published.
Current Operation Kenova boss Sir Iain Livingstone recently wrote to relatives of people linked to the Kenova investigation to highlight his frustration over ongoing delays in providing individual reports.
Mr Winters wrote to the PPS this week about the recent revelations.
“Just over one year on from the interim report families have yet to receive their bespoke reports together with confirmation on the identity of the agent known as Stakeknife,” he said.
“Much of the blame for that lies with MI5 …
“To compound the problem, we now learn the full details around the decision not to prosecute Freddie Scappaticci and others for perjury and perverting the course of justice.”
Mr Winters said the recent revelations give rise to concern.
Public Inquiry
“We are most definitely in public inquiry terrain with this latest bizarre development,” he said.
A PPS spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that correspondence from the legal representative of a victim’s family was received on 25th March 2025 in relation to certain PPS decisions taken on Operation Kenova files. The matters raised will be considered carefully and a response will issue in due course.
“Reasons for the decisions in question were published on 29th October 2020.
“The evidence and information on the Kenova files was considered with extreme care by the PPS and also by independent counsel instructed to advise the PPS.
“All decisions were taken with complete integrity following an independent and impartial application of the Test for Prosecution,” added the spokeswoman.
Blair agreed to IRA talks in 2001 — but was advised to pretend they were with SF
Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, March 26th, 2025
PRIVATE 'IMPLEMENTATION GROUP' FOR REPUBLICANS AND SENIOR CIVIL SERVANTS, WHICH WOULD DISCUSS 'ON-THE-RUNS' AND REMOVAL OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS, WAS ESTABLISHED
Tony Blair agreed to direct police and military meetings with the IRA — but was advised that it should be deniable by claiming they were talking to Sinn Fein, declassified government files reveal.
Among files opened at the National Archives in Kew is a secret Downing Street volume from early 2001, when the Government was attempting to secure IRA decommissioning and Sinn Fein support for the police.
The file shows that Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president appointed as an independent inspector of IRA arms dumps, was in regular contact with senior Government figures.
Their conversations were recorded with a 'secret and personal' classification, restricting the information to a handful of key figures in Downing Street and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).
‘A private word’
On January 8, 2001, Ahtisaari came to see Blair for “a private word” where he showed the Prime Minister a note of a meeting which he and his fellow inspector, Cyril Ramaphosa, had with Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly just over a month earlier.
A record of their conversation said that Sinn Fein wanted to meet “probably in France” to “brainstorm with Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa on the military aspects of the Northern Ireland peace process”.
He said that Ramaphosa, who is now South African president, had “proposed once again his idea of working level groups between the IRA and the British side on the detailed implementation of agreements”.
He said Gerry Adams thought that the Army wouldn't talk directly to the IRA.
In fact, Blair was happy for that to happen, saying that “he was in principle keen to draw in the IRA directly” and “would be in favour of setting up a working group”.
The Prime Minister's private secretary, Sir John Sawers — a future head of MI6 — said the former Finnish president was “keen to keep these details to a very tight circle” and “he did not leave behind his note”.
Four days later, senior NIO official Paul Priestly wrote to give advice about Ahtisaari's proposal for what he described as a “working level group between the IRA and the British side”.
‘No illusions’ - Mandelson
Priestly said that the NIO could also “see some advantage in making contact at local level in order to dispel any possible misunderstandings of normalisation announcements” as the military presence in Northern Ireland was steadily reduced.
The official said that the NIO would prefer that Sinn Fein “should field a representative” who from time to time could meet a police commander and the Army commander for a region.
However, the official said that Secretary of State Peter Mandelson believed they should be cautious, because “while we would be under no illusions in practice that we were engaging with the IRA, it is important that we should be able to present this as discussion with a Sinn Fein representative, as we currently do in the case of conversations with Adams and Kelly.
“The IRA remains a proscribed organisation and should not be seen to be talking with impunity to the main agents of law enforcement in the Province.”
He added that “news of any such meetings would be bound to become public knowledge”.
Having just accepted that they would in fact be dealing with the IRA, Priestly then said that “it would be wrong of us to expect the police or the Army to engage in discussions with those known only as IRA members”.
The distinction he appeared to draw was between those who were both IRA members and elected Sinn Fein figures and those who had were IRA leaders with no political mandate.
Mandelson also didn't want the meetings to become “formalised or scheduled at regular intervals or have any connotation of the security forces being accountable to Sinn Fein for security policy or action”.
The secret memo said Mandelson wanted the contacts to “be presentable — if they become public knowledge — as briefing of the kind that would be offered to any political party”.
Priestly — who would later end up as the top Stormont official to Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy before being demoted after improper behaviour emerged in public — said the Chief Constable “would be happy to proceed in this way and we believe the GOC [the top Army officer in Northern Ireland] would too, although we have not yet discussed it with him.
“We suspect Sinn Fein might be less willing, despite Adams' comments to Ramaphosa.
“The leadership are generally wary of the kind of delegation this approach implies and we wonder whether Adams was seeking to hide behind his statement that the Army would be reluctant to talk directly to the IRA.
“However, that makes it all the more attractive to attempt to put them on the back foot by responding positively…”
Adams declined direct talks with IRA
Other files released in recent years show that Blair offered to talk directly to the IRA but Adams declined, something the Prime Minister reminded him of when there was later claims of difficulties in communication.
A document trail across multiple files shows that officials then worked on creating what they called an 'implementation group' involving republicans.
A February 2001 paper in a Downing Street file titled 'Implementation Group' stated that the group would be “informal” and would involve both British and Irish officials as well as “representatives of Sinn Fein”. 'Language from Chequers, 19 Jan' is handwritten at the top of the page.
The group was to “meet privately” where it would “monitor the implementation of commitments made, including on policing, security normalisation, OTRs [on-the-runs] and the issue of arms”.
It would be able to agree “actions and remedies”.
On top of meetings which would be at least fortnightly, there would be “a dedicated representative from the two Governments and Sinn Fein to liaise and exchange information on an ongoing basis between meetings”.
On March 1, 2001, Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, said they would put to Adams “the implementation committee if they still want that”.
NIO Refused to Comment
Last year, the Belfast Telegraph revealed details of the 'implementation group' for the first time, but it was not clear from the files released at that point whether it had actually been set up. The NIO refused to comment.
Now it is clear that the group was established.
The group's first meeting was held in October 2001 and there are extensive minutes of that meeting.
During the encounter, Martin McGuinness told Powell that “the Implementation Group was an important new format...[which] would help ensure that misunderstandings did not develop”.
After a lengthy discussion about issues including OTRs and the removal of military installations, McGuinness raised the coalition bombing of Afghanistan after September 11. The minutes recorded that he said: “This was causing civilian casualties (comment: !).”
The Belfast Telegraph asked the NIO whether the group still existed, and if not, when it had ceased to exist.
Initially, the NIO declined to comment on the record but then changed its stance. In a brief statement, the NIO said: “The group referenced no longer exists. We do not comment on National Archives releases, or releases relating to previous Governments.”
Legal action settled over claims loyalists were wrongly interned ‘to even the score’
Alan Erwin, Irish News and Belfast Telegraph, September 26th, 2025
A LEGAL action over claims that loyalists were wrongly interned at the height of the Troubles to “even up the score” has been settled.
Proceedings issued by east Belfast man Jim Wilson were resolved on confidential terms, a High Court judge was informed.
Mr Wilson was among a group of 19 elderly Protestant men who sued the UK state for allegedly imprisoning them without trial in order to balance the number of Catholics detained under the policy.
At least five of the cohort have died since writs were first issued more than a decade ago.
Internment without trial was introduced in 1971 as violence raged in Northern Ireland.
Nearly 2,000 people, most of them Catholic, were locked up over the next four years.
Actions were brought against the Northern Ireland Office, PSNI, Ministry of Defence and secretary of state by men from the so-called loyalist side of the community.
They alleged the British government abused its power by jailing them because of their religion, and to demonstrate internment was not just focused on Catholics.
Taken like a new born child
One of the men involved in the litigation previously expressed his desire for vindication.
Aged in his nineties he stated at an earlier stage in the legal process: “I was taken like a new-born child for nothing.”
Mr Wilson’s claim was identified as one of the first cases to be examined.
The 73-year-old was arrested in July 1973 and interned for 14 months at the old Long Kesh prison camp.
He previously described how it resulted in him losing his house, job and missing out on the birth of his first child.
His action was listed for a five day hearing at the High Court.
But his barrister told Mr Justice Rooney that the case had been settled on a confidential basis.
Counsel confirmed: “The defendants are to have judgment against the plaintiff, with no order for costs [between the parties].”
Family of mother murdered by IRA lose battle for Public Inquiry
Alan Erwin, Irish News, March 26th, 2025
Relatives of Belfast woman killed by interrogation gang wanted public inquiry into full extent of ‘infiltration’
RELATIVES of a Belfast woman abducted and murdered by an IRA interrogation gang have lost a High Court battle aimed at securing a public inquiry into the full extent it was penetrated by state agents.
Lawyers for the family of Caroline Moreland claimed the UK government unlawfully failed to order a statutory probe after a major report established infiltration of the Internal Security Unit (ISU) went well beyond the top Army spy codenamed Stakeknife.
But a judge dismissed the challenge yesterday because the Operation Kenova investigation team has not yet completed their work.
Mr Justice Humphreys ruled: “The stated position of the Secretary of State that this is not the time to consider establishing an independent statutory inquiry is unassailable.”
In July 1994 members of the ISU – the IRA’s so-called ‘nutting squad’ – abducted and killed Ms Moreland on suspicion of being a British informer.
Interrogated and tortured for two weeks
The 34-year-old Catholic mother of three was interrogated and tortured for two weeks before her body was dumped near Rosslea, Co Fermanagh.
Her murder formed part of the £40m Operation Kenova investigation centred on the criminal activities of Stakeknife, widely believed to be west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci.
Scappaticci, an IRA executioner and undercover agent, died in 2023.
In an interim report published 12 months ago, the Operation Kenova investigation team, then led by now PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, found that Stakeknife probably cost more lives than he saved while operating at the heart of the republican movement.
Mr Boutcher also made clear that more work remained to be done, and pledged to call out any identified culpable acts and omissions by the security forces in final case-specific reports.
At the time the British government acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations but declined to comment on the substance until the conclusion of all related litigation.
Scappaticci ‘not personally involved’
It has since been confirmed that the agent Stakeknife was not personally involved in Ms Moreland’s murder. But her family applied for a judicial review, alleging the secretary of state has declined to hold a public inquiry into the wider activities of the ISU.
Counsel representing her son Marc Moreland claimed the refusal to set up a statutory tribunal at this stage breached Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
He contended that the interim Operation Kenova report highlighted a failure to regulate agents and raised questions about the potential failure to take action to “dismantle” the ISU.
Lawyers representing the secretary of state responded that the challenge was unsustainable as no decision has been taken at this stage.
Backing those submissions, Mr Justice Humphreys indicated the family may ultimately obtain all the information they have sought for years when the case-specific report is received.
‘Non-sensical’ challenge says Judge
He described it as “nonsensical” to pursue a challenge to the investigative process.
“This illustrates the fundamental flaw at the heart of this application. Operation Kenova has not completed its work,” he pointed out.
“If, ultimately, Operation Kenova completes its work and the Article 2 obligation is satisfied, any call for a public inquiry would be unnecessary, inappropriate and futile.”
Rejecting all grounds of challenge, the judge further stated: “There has been no decision on whether or not to hold a public inquiry.
“It would be wholly inappropriate to do so before the work of Operation Kenova is complete.”
The Moreland family’s solicitor, Kevin Winters, described the outcome as providing “a route map for future legal agitation”.
Speaking outside court, Mr Winters said: “There was a clear disagreement between ourselves and the secretary of state on whether or not a decision had in fact been taken on a public inquiry in relation to the ISU and the killing of Caroline Moreland.
“The court found in favour of the state at this stage (but) we will revisit this issue again after the final Kenova report is produced.”
