‘MEDIEVAL’ | 

‘Stakeknife’ Freddie Scappaticci threatened to skin alive IRA touts during torture

As head of the IRA’s internal security unit, the double agent orchestrated a campaign of torture akin to medieval times.

Sat 16 Sep 2023 at 17:18

British agent Freddie Scappaticci threatened to skin alive suspected IRA touts unless they confessed to their ‘crimes’.

The agent known as Stakeknife oversaw a savage regime of torture and murder, with a specialist team of interrogators trained to extract a ‘confession’ at all costs.

As head of the IRA’s internal security unit – known as the Nutting Squad as most of their victims were put out of their misery with a shot to the head – he orchestrated a campaign of torture akin to medieval times.

It is widely accepted Scappaticci was either directly or indirectly involved in 35 murders. Author Richard O’Rawe reckons that is only the tip of the iceberg.

“I don’t think we are anywhere near the bottom of that well,” he told the Sunday World this week.

“Who knows, certainly there could be many many more.”

In his newly released book Stakeknife’s Dirty War, the former IRA prisoner lifts the lid on the blood-soaked double life of the conflict’s most notorious agent, and how British spooks pulled the strings deciding who lived and died.

He also uncovers the role of the shadowy Tasking and Co-ordinating Groups (TCGs), the umbrella group made up of senior personnel from RUC Special Branch and ER4A unit, and secretive Force Research Unit who ran spies in Northern Ireland.

He questions whether the late Martin McGuinness was a state agent, as many believe, and he examines his role in the abduction and murder of Derry volunteer Frank Hegarty.

Such was the secrecy surrounding Stakeknife in life and death, O’Rawe even questions whether he’s actually dead.

Scappaticci, from the Markets area of Belfast and who was reported to have died in April this year, answered to his TCG – they controlled him and he informed them of everything. They knew, in advance, of every murder carried out by the Nutting Squad.

“They owned him – you don’t take a s**t without telling us.”

They also knew of the primeval methods applied by Stakeknife’s torturers, yet did nothing to intervene.

Those accused of being touts were taken away for interrogation – a euphemism for unspeakable torture.

O’Rawe interviewed Paul McDade – one of the “lucky ones’’ who endured three days of torture only to be spared.

An IRA volunteer, he was bundled into the boot of a car and driven to a remote location in the middle of Ireland. There he was zipped into a sleeping bag and for three days he was forced to remain there, lying in his own faeces and urine. His torturers suspended him in the air, dropping him from a height on to a concrete floor.

His interrogators stubbed cigarettes out on him. In the book he details further depravities.

To this day McDade battles his demons.

“Those poor souls had a hood put on their heads and told they had an hour to confess. They were told they would be skinned. How would you feel as the clock ticks down knowing that’s it’s too late and that your family is going to hear your confession and having to live with the stigma their son, father, brother was a tout?”

All ‘confessions’ were taped. That was the proof. The IRA Army Council had the final say but they never overruled the Nutting Squad.

Little did the terror group realise, but they were part of a chain involving the British.

“There was the IRA Army Council, but there was another Army Council above them – the TCGs.

“The IRA and British government owe those families a full apology. Their ‘guilt’ is immaterial, none of this should have happened and for those families to live with this trauma all these years is just wrong.”

No one knows for sure why or how Scappaticci was ‘turned’ to work for the British, there are many theories, including being blackmailed over alleged sex crimes. Whatever the truth, he was their most effective and deadly agent.

From 1978 when he moved from OC of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade to the internal security unit, to 1984 when he became its OC and to his outing in 2003, he hid in plain sight. No one suspected him.

He was a trusted volunteer and an integral part of the IRA’s controlling inner circle.

Such was his standing he was part of a three-man internal investigation into the Loughgall ambush in 1987 when the SAS shot dead eight members of East Tyrone IRA.

It is also thought he was part of an inquiry into the shooting dead of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar in 1988.

“He would have questioned everyone involved in those operations, from the boatman who brought the guns across Lough Neagh to the people who lived in the house where the guns were stashed, the quartermaster, and remember, all of that information, all of it was being handed to his TCG.

“I suppose it’s a testament to how good the Brits are at their craft. But it’s rotten, rotten.”

Despite his lofty position in the IRA, the men on the ground hated him. O’Rawe was interned at the same time as him in the 70s and describes him as a “gobsh*te”.

Death

“I knew him to say hello but the men hated him. Imagine how you’d feel if Scappaticci turned up in your area, there was only one outcome, someone, rightly or wrongly, was going down.

“He was the angel of death. It was his job to hunt IRA men.”

He vetted all new recruits and debriefed those involved in operations.

“The Brits knew all about them before they were even sworn in,” says O’Rawe.

O’Rawe interviewed former IRA volunteers – “old men now, in their seventies” – and senior security personnel.

He said there was deep suspicion around former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness who some believe had been working for MI6 from as early as 1972.

Mr McGuinness’s alleged connection to the abduction and murder of British agent Frank Hegarty in 1986 has been shrouded in doubt. Hegarty’s body was found in Donegal after he was allowed to rejoin the IRA in Derry despite being outed as an informant.

“I spoke to a lot of people who had suspicions. For me, none of what they said crossed the evidential line that he was an agent. That’s as far as I can go with that.”

Next week the government’s controversial Legacy Bill is expected to pass into law when the King grants Royal Assent. Next month Jon Boutcher, former Chief Constable of Bedfordshire, will publish his long-awaited Kenova report into the activities of Stakeknife.

The much-delayed report, which has been with MI5 for more than a year, is expected to contain explosive and damaging revelations surrounding British security service involvement here.

“It was never about the poor farmer shot on the border years ago. This is what the legacy legislation is really about, the bill is passed and then his report comes out in the hope it will keep those on the TCG’s out of court,” O’Rawe said.

“I don’t think it will work, when Kenova comes out the courts will be tied up for years. This isn’t over yet.

“Stakeknife is only the tip of the iceberg, how many Stakeknifes are out there? Whatever secrets he had he’s taken them to his grave – that’s if he’s dead.

“We don’t know how he died, he might be lying on Bondi Beach for all we know.”

​- Stakeknife’s Dirty War by Richard O’Rawe is published by Merrion Press and is priced £17.99/€18.99.