Freddie Scappaticci, also known as ‘Stakeknife’, was a West Belfast man who led a dangerous double life as both an IRA executioner and an Army spy. He was alleged to have been involved in multiple killings while working as a spy, passing on intelligence about the IRA. Scappaticci denied these allegations, but his unmasking as a British agent in 2003 caused shock throughout the republican movement. He was forced to move into hiding in England, where he remained until his death in 2023.
Scappaticci joined the IRA in the 1970s and was recruited by the Army as an agent in the late 1970s. Throughout the 1980s, he worked within the IRA’s internal security unit. Its primary function was to identify and locate informers who were subsequently kidnapped, tortured, and killed. During this time, Scappaticci became involved in multiple killings. The IRA became suspicious of him around 1990 and stood down him and his unit.
In 2016, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) requested a major investigation into Stakeknife and the role of his Army handlers and MI5. The PSNI named the external inquiry Operation Kenova, which had around 50 detectives from outside Northern Ireland assigned to it. It was tasked with investigating more than 50 murders and any connections to Stakeknife. The investigation cost approximately £40m.
Operation Kenova examined the conduct of Stakeknife’s handlers in the Army and MI5, scrutinizing whether the state was complicit in a series of severe crimes. The unit that Scappaticci was part of was known as the “nutting squad,” and its primary objective was identifying informers and dealing with them, including those falsely accused of being traitors, by shooting them in the back of the head after using torture in their interrogations. Operation Kenova investigated the activities of Stakeknife and his unit, who were suspected of direct involvement in 18 murders.
The investigation interviewed over 300 peo
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