A group of fifty former British police officers and agents have dedicated nine years to Operation Kenova, commissioned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Its mission, among others: to investigate. Freddie Scappaticci, aka Stake knife (Stake Knife, as the weapon used to kill vampires was called), the son of Italian immigrants in Ireland, joined the IRA in 1969. Shortly after, he betrayed the organization and offered his services to MI5, the United Kingdom’s internal security agency. Heading an internal investigation unit, Stake knife He ordered the capture and murder of many alleged informants. It was his way of protecting his own safety, to avoid being betrayed.
The Operation Kenova report, signed by Iain Livingstone, former Commissioner of Police Scotland, was presented this Tuesday, and its conclusions are devastating and embarrassing for MI5. The British intelligence services protected, protected to the point of taking him “on vacation” outside of Ireland on at least two occasions to avoid being investigated by the police. That kind of misunderstood loyalty to the double agent extended even beyond the years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland (the ), and continued after the signing of the Good Friday Peace Accords.
The Operation Kenova team launched a second task, known as Operation Denton, which investigated the activities of a paramilitary group of loyalists (the illegal organizations fighting the IRA) called the “Glenanne gang”, to which at least 120 murders are attributed. Among its attacks, the Dublin-Monaghan bombs stand out, which ended up killing 33 people, including a pregnant woman.
The identity of StakeKnife
Although the British media report respects the internal regulations of the intelligence services and makes no mention of Freddie Scappaticci. The double agent died in 2023, at the age of 77, so the conclusions presented this Tuesday will not foreseeably lead to any criminal initiative. When his identity was revealed, MI5 incorporated him into a witness protection program, relocated him under a new identity and financed his upkeep for years.
It was already known that Stake knife He was recruited by an agent of the British Army, shortly after he had received a beating at the hands of members of the IRA, as a result of an argument with a leader of the organization.
A construction worker before being recruited by the organization, he gained the trust of his colleagues by being part of the group of terrorists who were imprisoned without trial between 1971 and 1974. The British intelligence services knew him as Golden Egg (the golden egg) for the substantial information it provided them for decades.
A police unit dedicated exclusively to handling the mole was launched, which was named rat hole (rat hole), and a telephone line was installed just for the agent, which he could use to notify his contacts at any time of the day.
The conclusions of the Operation Kenova investigation, however, significantly reduced the inflated number of arrests and police successes that MI5 attributed to the double agent. StakeKnife has been linked to at least 18 murders, and most of the victims died from a gunshot to the head.
“Time and time again, it appeared that protecting the officer took precedence over protecting the lives of his victims, or over the right of family members to obtain justice for crimes committed against their loved ones,” the report concludes.
“The security forces withheld and refused to provide information about possible threats to people’s lives,” in order to protect their undercover agents, Jon Boutcher, chief commissioner of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, accused this Tuesday during the presentation of the report’s conclusions. “The Kenova investigation has shown that these murders could and should have been prevented, and that those responsible were never brought to justice. In fact, they were left free to continue killing,” he said.
Both Boutcher and Livingstone, who have appeared together before the press, have recalled the suffering of the victims and demanded a change in the law so that the identity of StakeKnife be made public by the British Government. “I could directly quote one of the families’ lawyers, who participated in a BBC program in 2024, and said that ‘even stray dogs know that Fred Scappaticci was StakeKnife”, said the Northern Irish chief commissioner.
Although the report does not directly accuse MI5 of withholding information from investigators, shortly after the publication of a first interim report on Operation Kenova last year, Britain’s domestic intelligence service discovered six files containing hundreds of documents that revealed it “had much greater knowledge of and involvement with the activities of Stake knife than was originally thought.”
The agency’s director general, Ken McCallum, has expressed his sympathy for “the victims and relatives of those who were tortured or murdered by the IRA’s internal unit.” [la que dirigía Stakeknife] during the era of violence”, and has apologized to those responsible for the investigation for the late appearance of documents that could have been useful years ago to reveal the truth.
