How Stakeknife was able to escape IRA without punishment

“They think they’re going to go home…but they don’t.”

10 words that sum up the Provisional IRA’s internal security unit.

That sentence was spoken by the person who knew exactly how the feared nutting squad operated.

When he spoke to reporters from ITV's Cook Report in the 1990s he didn’t call himself Freddie or Stakeknife, but that is exactly who he was.

Scappaticci broke ranks to speak to the current affairs program after it had aired allegations around Martin McGuinness a few days earlier.

The reporters focused on what he had to say about the Sinn Féin rather than the internal workings of the internal security unit, but we did get a glimpse into how the unit operated.

“Standard procedure is to strip them and debug them, just to see if they are wired up and then they usually put a boiler suit on them.”

“They then get you into a room, blindfold you, strip you.”

“The room is cold, they make you all sorts of promises, everyone is at breaking point”

“They think they are going to go home but they don’t.”

This was coming from the man who was tasked with being a spy catcher for the IRA while himself being the chief spy among his comrades.

Little did they know when he carried coffins, stood shoulder to shoulder with them that he was an informer being paid £80K a year for his services.

The significance of his role can’t be under estimated and while there are questions about how many lives he saved the knowledge he would have possessed can’t be underestimated.

Richard O’Rawe, author of Stakeknife's Dirty War, told UTV: “As head of internal security unit, all major operations in the Belfast had to go through him beforehand.

“He was actually in many ways running Belfast”

“If he was running Belfast the British forces were running Belfast.”

A lot of effort went into protecting Stakeknife, people lost their lives so his cover could remain intact.

Decisions were taken by people within the intelligence services on who should live and who should die.

Some would have been other agents and others would have been innocent people accused of being an informer.

Brian Rowan, security correspondent, said: "This was one Army agent interrogating other army agents.

“In all the grotesqueness of that dirty war, the Army had someone in the middle of this.”

“Not tied to the chair, not pleading for mercy, not speaking his last words, but running the show.”

Despite being outed in 2003 and then going on the run Freddie Scappaticci always denied he was Stakeknife.

There were few who fully believed him, but unlike other informers the IRA never tortured and murdered him.

Brian Rowan said “There was his predicament, and there was their predicament.

“If they shot him and accepted their internal security had been completely compromised”

“Then the next question in an organisation likes that is well if him, then who else.”

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