Army IRA spy Freddie Scappaticci admitted to killing suspected informer

The man suspected of being a top British army operative within the IRA admitted in 1990 that he had shot dead a suspected informer.

The detail was discovered in a court document during a BBC Spotlight investigation into his activities.

Freddie Scappaticci, who died in April, has always denied being the agent given the code name Stakeknife.

Stakeknife is believed to have been linked to more than 20 murders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

By 1990, Freddie Scappaticci had become the IRA’s top spy-catcher within its internal security unit.

He was known as the “wacky squad” because the informants he uncovered were shot in the head – the nut – and their bodies dumped after interrogations involving torture.

In February 1989, Joe Fenton was shot dead after being questioned by the IRA’s internal security unit at a house in West Belfast.

No one has ever been charged with his murder.

Several months later, another alleged informant, Sandy Lynch, was brought to the same property for questioning by Freddie Scappaticci and others.

Spotlight has spoken to Gerard Hodgins, a former IRA prisoner, who was also one of the people at the house where Sandy Lynch was being held.

“I had no idea her name was Sandy Lynch at the time, they just told us to go to a house to babysit, the guy was an informant,” she told the show.

Unlike many suspected informers within the ranks of the IRA, however, Sandy Lynch survived after the property was raided by police.

By then, Freddie Scappaticci had already left the house, but he had left something behind: fingerprints on the battery of an anti-bug device.

A police fingerprint expert said he was sure the print was made by “Frederick Scappaticci.”

To avoid arrest, Freddie Scappaticci eloped to the Republic of Ireland for a while.

Sandy Lynch, who was a police informant, testified in court before entering a protection program.

As part of his statement in court, he detailed the IRA interrogation he was subjected to, including how his interrogators stripped him naked, blindfolded him, tied him up and taunted him for hours.

“One of them told me that he enjoyed his job and that he was going to break me,” he said.

In her statement, Sandy Lynch also made detailed references to Freddie Scappaticci.

“He said he would wake me up hanging upside down in a stable and he would talk to me the way he wanted to talk to me, that he would skin me alive and no one would hear me scream.”

Joe Fenton’s body had been left in an alley a few yards from the house where Sandy Lynch was being questioned.

Sandy Lynch’s statement also included graphic comments she said Freddie Scappaticci had made about the way Joe Fenton died.

He said: “[Freddie Scappaticci] he patted me on the back of the neck two or three times and said, ‘There you go… like that bastard Fenton.’

“He said he had done it.”

But it seems that Freddie Scappaticci was untouchable because when he was arrested it was related to his fingerprint and he had already made up a false alibi.

Gerard Hodgins is one of eight people whose convictions in connection with the Sandy Lynch episode were overturned after it emerged that crucial information had been withheld from law enforcement.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Lynch episode, Freddie Scappaticci’s position in the IRA began to decline.

Those at the top of the IRA know exactly when their spy-catcher was thrown out into the cold, but Freddie Scappaticci didn’t meet the same brutal end demanded of others.

“The reason why the IRA leaders did not execute Freddie Scappaticci in 1990, in my opinion, was as a result of the need to save their own skin,” former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre told the programme.

“The IRA was well aware that every interaction they had with Freddie Scappaticci, every order they gave to kill, every order they gave to kidnap, every order they gave to interrogate or torture, Freddie Scappaticci had passed that on to the British and also that Freddie Scappaticci may have recorded this and that they were in deep, serious trouble.”

Operation Kenova, a multi-million dollar criminal investigation into Stakeknife’s activities, is being led by Jon Boutcher, former Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police.

Operation Kenova has been running since 2016 and its report may shed light on details long kept in the dark about Agent Stakeknife’s activities, including what was known about the interrogation of suspected informants before they occurred.

Attorney Kevin Winters represents the families of several of those killed by Freddie Scappaticci’s IRA unit.

“As I understand it, there is a potential claim that each individual case that is a subject of Operation Kenova, in each individual murder, those deaths could have been prevented if there had been some kind of state intervention,” he told Spotlight.

“That’s a pretty harsh assessment to make.

“We’re going to know that very, very soon whether or not it stands up to scrutiny.”

The Operation Kenova report is in what is described as the “security check” stage.

The Defense Ministry told Spotlight: “As the investigation is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

The Northern Ireland Public Prosecutor’s Office is considering 26 files it received from Operation Kenova directly relating to its investigation into alleged Stakeknife criminality.

The files concern a variety of potential crimes including murder, unlawful imprisonment, felony assaults and public service misconduct.

Spotlight: The Spy Who Got Away With Murder will be available on BBC iPlayer from 06:00 on Tuesday and will air on BBC One Northern Ireland at 22:40 on Tuesday.