Agents inside the Provisional IRA (PIRA) who were working for the security services knowingly murdered other agents in a similar position, according to the interim Kenova Report published on Friday by Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the PSNI.
The report, which was focused on the activities of an agent code-named Stakeknife, widely understood to be the late PIRA member Freddie Scappaticci, also said agents were involved in murders where “it is arguable they were acting on behalf of the state”.
Agents inside the PIRA who gave information to the security services saved many lives during the Troubles and “significantly degraded and debilitated the effectiveness of terrorist groups,” the report said.
However, in their effort to protect agents, the security services allowed serious crimes, including murder, to occur and to go unpunished, it said.
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The Kenova inquiry found “murders committed by agents, including cases where one agent knowingly or unknowingly murdered another, cases where agents were acting contrary to their instructions or tasking, and cases where it is arguable that they were acting on behalf of the state.”
[ Kenova Report: Who is Jon Boutcher in the Stakeknife investigation?Opens in new window ]
The report is focused on the PIRA’s so-called internal security unit (ISU), or “nutting squad”, where Mr Scappaticci was a senior figure. It abducted, tortured and sometimes killed members of the PIRA who were suspected or accused of being informers.
However, according to the report, some of those murdered had not in fact been informers and in some instances they had been accused of informing because of rivalry or matters to do with sexual relationships.
“The motivation behind allegations that some people were agents was often linked to PIRA hierarchal disputes, clashes over PIRA criminal activities, and, on occasion, even intended to eliminate partners for those involved in extramarital affairs.”
The inquiry also found evidence that the PIRA “took violent and punitive action against women and children in their family homes while detaining and torturing loved ones suspected of being agents.”
Senior leadership figures in the PIRA who commissioned the ISU were later active in seeking fairness and human rights protections, the report said.
“There is a stark contrast between their public position and the wanton use of torture and murder against people from their community who were often innocent of the accusations made against them.”
The report names Gerry Adams and the late Martin McGuinness when referring to republican leaders who would “routinely grandstand and intimidate the victims’ families.”
The report found that during the duration of the Troubles there was no adequate rules in place for the handling of informers inside a group such as the PIRA.
Leaders from the time who were interviewed included prime ministers, government ministers, permanent under secretaries, director generals of M15, and senior army and police officers.
It emerged that there were different approaches towards agent recruitment and management in different elements of the security forces with some expressing concern about the conduct of the RUC special branch and the British army’s Force Research Unit (FRU) – who ran Scappaticci.
Some Kenova victims who survived PIRA mistreatment have named those responsible and “I have established that some of them were agents when they committed brute acts of torture, including shootings,” according to Boutcher’s report.
The approach to managing agents varied within the security services, the report said, with M15 demonstrating “elements of reasonable oversight”, in contrast to the Special Branch and the FRU. At times there were suspicions that agents were not being managed in compliance with (inadequate) Home Office guidelines but “nothing was done” to identify or correct such failures.
Those involved in recruiting agents were told that agents could not commit crimes but this was a “charade” as the agents were inevitably members of proscribed organisations routinely involved in terrorism.
“A lack of governance, accountability and scrutiny allowed agents to progress to positions of responsibility and leadership within the organisations they infiltrated. The longer a person is inside a terrorist group, the more trusted they become and liable to promotion to senior positions.”
Belfast solicitor Kevin Winter, of KRW Law, who held a press conference after the publication of the report, noted how there were none of the families of victims that he represented, present at the event. The families, most of whom came from republican areas, still felt “very uncomfortable” about being in the public domain.
They had not yet been told, in private, whether their family member had in fact been an agent of the security services, and do not know if they will be told, he said.
In the report it is stated that some of those murdered were not in fact agents. It is also stated that recorded confessions by some of those murdered should be disregarded as victims were sometimes told that if they confessed their lives would be spared. However the PIRA “executed many of those who made admissions in a vain attempt to stay alive”.
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