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More lives were lost in Northern Ireland’s Troubles than were saved as a result of the activities of the UK intelligence services’ star agent, a long-awaited official report has found, as it called on the British government and republican leaders to issue apologies over the three-decade conflict.
The 208-page interim Kenova report on Friday rubbished suggestions that information supplied by “Stakeknife”, the UK’s star asset inside the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, had saved hundreds of lives.
Instead Jon Boutcher, former head of the seven-year, £40mn investigation dubbed Operation Kenova, said the number of lives saved was “between high single figures and low double figures” but that it did not take account of those lost as a result of Stakeknife’s continued activity within the IRA.
“From what I have seen, I think it probable that this resulted in more lives being lost than saved,” Boutcher said. He declined to say how many, ahead of publication of the full Kenova report, expected later this year.
Freddie Scappaticci, a former senior member of the IRA’s “nutting squad” tasked with dispatching informants with a bullet to the head, is widely accepted as having been Stakeknife. He died last year.
Kevin Winters, partner at law firm KRW Law, which represents 12 families of victims and other survivors of IRA interrogations of suspected informants, called the report a “damning indictment of the state”.
Boutcher, now chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, called on the British government and republican leaders to apologise to victims of the Troubles, in which more than 3,700 people died.
“This report leaves little doubt that the republican leadership was responsible for numerous dreadful crimes, many of which the government failed to prevent,” he said.
The UK government declined to comment until publication of the full report. Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, whose nationalist Sinn Féin party was long considered the paramilitaries’ mouthpiece, told reporters: “We all know the IRA have left the stage.”
Boutcher said Stakeknife himself, who was not identified in the report, was not owed any debt of gratitude, and called the IRA’s actions “the most shameful evil I have encountered”.
“We are all disappointed that there were no prosecutions,” he said.
Winters said families’ immediate reaction to the call for an apology “runs a bit hollow”. He added: “We are left with the horrendous conclusion that both the state and IRA were co-conspirators in the murder of its citizens.”
O’Neill said: “People’s lives from every section of the community were trespassed upon during the conflict by British State forces, republicans, loyalists and unimaginable grief, hurt, pain and suffering was inflicted. I am wholeheartedly committed to healing the wounds of the past”.
The Kenova report comes as the UK government this week launched an appeal against a Belfast High Court ruling that immunity provisions of its new Legacy Act to deal with Troubles-era crimes breach European human rights law.
“It is a core responsibility of government to protect its citizens,” the report said. “It is one thing to have been unable to protect every person, including agents . . . It is entirely another to deliberately not apply the law and allow people to come to serious harm and be murdered.”
Boutcher blasted the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, saying the process of handling agents was treated at the time as a “high-stakes dark art”.
Trying to extract information from MI5 had been “a hard-fought uphill battle”, he added. “This lack of disclosure about offences as serious as murder would not be tolerated elsewhere in the United Kingdom.”
The Troubles involved the IRA fighting to end British rule and reunite Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries battling to keep the region in the UK, and British security forces.
Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service last month decided not to prosecute 12 individuals reported by Operation Kenova. But Boutcher said Kenova had proved that “legacy investigations can be successful”.
