Freddie Scappaticci

Scappaticci was born on 12 January 1946 to Mary Murray and Danny Scappaticci and grew up in the Markets area of Belfast. His father had been an Italian immigrant to the city in the 1920s. He took up work as a bricklayer. Scappaticci was fined for riotous assembly in 1970 after being caught up in the Troubles and, a year later, was interned without trial in Long Kesh at the age of 25 as part of Operation Demetrius. Scappaticci was married, and had six children. ==IRA career==

By 1980, Scappaticci was a lead member in the Internal Security Unit (ISU) for the IRA Northern Command. 18 killings as a result of ISU activities have been directly attributed to Scappaticci, and a suspected informer named Joe Fenton. He then left Northern Ireland and began living under witness protection. Around this time, he was said to be living in a detached house in Guildford and driving a Mercedes. ==Involvement with British intelligence==

Scappaticci's first involvement with British intelligence is alleged to have been in 1978, two years before the Force Research Unit (FRU) was formed in 1980. The role of the unit was to centralise Army Intelligence under the Intelligence Corps. He was said to have worked as an agent for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch; he had previously been interviewed by the RUC’s fraud squad in connection with a construction industry tax scam. Fearful of returning to prison, he offered to become a low-level informer. The former FRU agent turned whistleblower using the pseudonym "Martin Ingram" said in his 2004 book Stakeknife that Scappaticci eventually developed into valuable Agent 6126, • the attempted kidnapping of Galen Weston, a Canadian-born business tycoon in 1983. Weston kept a manor outside Dublin where the kidnapping was to take place. • the kidnapping of supermarket boss Don Tidey from his home in Rathfarnham in Dublin. Ingram alleges that Scappaticci tipped off the FRU on the details of the kidnapping, which eventually resulted in the killings of a trainee Garda Síochána (Gary Sheehan) and an Irish Army soldier (Private Patrick Kelly). Aside from providing intelligence to the FRU, Scappaticci is alleged to have worked closely with his FRU handlers throughout the 1980s and 1990s to protect and promote his position within the IRA. The controversy that has arisen centres on Ingram's allegation that the FRU killed individuals who might have exposed Scappaticci as an informer. ==Stakeknife==

"Stakeknife" was the code name of a high-level spy, now widely identified as Scappaticci, who successfully infiltrated the IRA while working for the FRU, a British military intelligence unit. The UK government launched Operation Kenova to investigate claims that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had failed to investigate up to 18 murders, to protect Stakeknife's identity from exposure. In January 2018, Scappaticci was arrested amid accusations that he was Stakeknife, a claim widely acknowledged to be accurate. Scappaticci always publicly denied he was Stakeknife. "Stakeknife" had his own dedicated handlers and agents, and it was suggested that he was important enough that MI5 set up an office dedicated solely to him. Rumours suggested that he was being paid at least £80,000 a year and had a bank account in Gibraltar. Stakeknife revealed In 1987, Sam McCrory, an Ulster Defence Association/"Ulster Freedom Fighters" member, killed 66-year-old Francisco Notarantonio at his home in Ballymurphy in West Belfast. The UDA/UFF had decided to murder the republican sympathiser who unknowingly had been targeted by the Force Research Unit (FRU) to divert attention away from Scappaticci. It has been alleged that it was FRU agent Brian Nelson who gave Notarantonio's name to the UDA/UFF to protect the identity of Stakeknife. Scappaticci, born in Belfast to Italian parents, denied the claims, and launched an unsuccessful legal action to force the UK government to publicly state that he was not their agent. A report in a February 2007 edition of the Belfast News Letter reported that a cassette recording, allegedly of Scappaticci talking about the number of murders he was involved in via the "Nutting Squad", as well as his work as an Army agent, had been lodged with the PSNI in 2004 and subsequently passed to the Stevens Inquiry in 2005. A former Intelligence agent who worked in the FRU, known as "Martin Ingram", has written a book titled Stakeknife since the original allegations came to light, stating that Scappaticci was the agent in question. ==Involvement with The Cook Report==

In 1993 Scappaticci approached the ITV programme The Cook Report and agreed to an interview on his activities in the IRA and the alleged role of Martin McGuinness in the organisation. The first interview took place on 26 August 1993 in the car park of the Culloden Hotel in Cultra, County Down. This interview was, unknown to Scappaticci, recorded and eventually found its way into an edition of the programme. The interview was posted online as the 2003 allegations against Scappaticci surfaced. Scappaticci appeared to give intimate details of the modus operandi of the IRA's Northern Command, indicated some of his previous involvement in the organisation and alleged, among other things, that Martin McGuinness was involved in the death of Frank Hegarty – an IRA volunteer who had been killed as an informer by the IRA in 1986. It has since been alleged that Scappaticci knew the intimate details of Hegarty's killing because, as part of his duties in the ISU, he had been involved in the interrogation and execution of Hegarty regarding a large Libyan arms cache, which the Gardaí found. Martin Ingram stated that Hegarty was an FRU agent whom other FRU members had encouraged to rise through the organisation and gain the confidence of key IRA members. ==Involvement with the Stevens Report==

Things deteriorated for Scappaticci when John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who was investigating collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the killing of Protestant student Brian Adam Lambert in 1987 and the killing of solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989, revealed that he knew of his existence. In April 2004, Stevens signaled that he intended to question Scappaticci as part of the third Stevens inquiry. ==Investigations==

A report in a February 2007 edition of the Belfast News Letter reported that a cassette recording allegedly of Scappaticci talking about the number of murders he was involved in via the "Nutting Squad", as well as his work as an Army agent, had been lodged with the PSNI in 2004 and subsequently passed to the Stevens Inquiry in 2005. In October 2015, it was announced that Scappaticci was to be investigated by the Police Service of Northern Ireland over at least 24 murders. In June 2016, it was announced that this investigation would be carried out by Bedfordshire Police and would examine the alleged activities of Stakeknife and possible crimes by IRA members and members of the British security services. Scappaticci was arrested in connection with Operation Kenova in January 2018. On 29 October 2020, the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland decided that there was insufficient evidence to put him on trial on charges of perjury. Stephen Herron, the PPS director in the area, also ruled out prosecutions of former members of the security services who are understood to have been his handlers as well as a former member of the PPS. On 5 March 2024, journalist Peter Taylor was permitted to publish a video of Scappaticci wearing a dressing gown outside his former home, in 2004. "In addition to spying for the British army, he was also the ISU's [IRA's, Internal Security Unit] chief interrogator, in which role he is believed to have been involved in 17 murders." BBC documentary, Our Dirty War: The British State and the IRA; had been prevented from publishing the video footage of the British agent, for 20 years, until now, Scappaticci is seen threatening and saying "I'll do you," if the photographer continues to film. In March 2024, the interim Kenova report, said more lives were lost than saved through agent Stakeknife's activities. ==Death==

Scappaticci died on 20 March 2023 without being charged. The Guardian reported that his health had deteriorated due to a series of strokes. It was later revealed that he had been known as 'Frank Cowley'. ==Undisclosed files==