‘Stakeknife’ agent cost more lives than he saved, major report concludes

More lives were probably lost than saved through the British Army’s operation of its top agent inside the IRA’s internal security unit during the Troubles, a major independent investigation has found.

The interim findings of Operation Kenova examined 101 murders and abductions linked to the Provisional IRA’s so-called “nutting squad” responsible for interrogating, torturing and murdering people suspected of passing information to the security forces during the conflict.

Operation Kenova, which was undertaken by Bedfordshire Police and ran for seven years at a cost of approximately £40 million, examined the role of the Army’s prized agent embedded in the heart of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit (ISU), an individual known as Stakeknife.

The agent Stakeknife was widely believed to be west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, who was 77 when he died last year.

The Operation Kenova report stops short of confirming Scappaticci as Stakeknife – noting that the Government’s ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ (NCND) policy prevents the identification of agents.

However, it prior to his death.