Armed police units descended on the safe house where MI5 was hiding the notorious IRA spy Stakeknife in the months before he died.
The security alert was triggered when the agent, whose real name was Freddie Scappaticci, is thought to have pushed a panic button after falling ill in February 2023.
The incident heightened the suspicions of neighbours in the village of West End, near Woking, Surrey, that there was something unusual about the elderly man renting the large detached house.
Freddie Scappaticci in 2003, the year he was exposed as a British agent
PA
The property is in the parliamentary constituency of Surrey Heath, which at the time was represented by the former cabinet minister Michael Gove.
Scappaticci, a builder from Belfast, was using the name Frank Cowley and claiming to be a property developer. In reality he was in hiding after fleeing Northern Ireland in 2003 when he was exposed as a British agent.
The owner of the house said he had been approached in 2019 by a local estate agent saying they had a company which wanted the house for an employee. The company was willing to pay £3,000 per month, much more than the market rate.
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The tenancy was uneventful until February 2023 when the landlord was contacted by neighbours telling him the house was surrounded by marked and unmarked police cars and armed officers were in the driveway and the back garden.
The landlord visited the property later that day: “The neighbours were petrified and no-one told them what was going on. One woman was on a Zoom call, heard people shouting ‘armed police’ and stuck her hands up in the air.”
Armed police outside the rented home of Freddie Scappaticci in 2023
He was met by a younger man who, he recalled, avoided eye contact as they spoke. He said the tenant had been taken to hospital and was suffering with dementia.
“He told me the man had been confused and had dialed 999 by mistake,” the landlord said. “I thought I had been renting the house to a working professional, not an older man with a serious illness. I remember saying to my wife later that I didn’t believe a word of what I’d been told.”
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Scappaticci was moved to the village after his previous address, in nearby Guildford, was compromised when he was arrested in 2018 by Operation Kenova, the special police unit investigating his activities in the IRA.
During the Troubles, while spying for British military intelligence on the upper echelons of the republican movement, Scappaticci was also a leading figure in the IRA internal security unit which hunted, interrogated and killed suspected informants. The unit was known as the “nutting squad” because its victims were shot in the head after being tortured, and their bodies dumped by the roadside.
The Kenova investigation identified Scappaticci as a key suspect in at least 14 murders and 15 abductions. He was never charged with any of those offences but pleaded guilty at Westminster magistrates court to possessing extreme pornography which officers had found on his laptop.
That arrest and court appearance made it necessary for MI5 to relocate him and give him a new identity. While in Guildford he had used the name Frank Conway, was registered on the electoral roll and purchased a house. The property was sold in 2019 for £443,000 after Scappaticci moved to West End using the name Cowley.
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Scappaticci’s health was deteriorating and it is understood that a member of his family moved in to look after him. It is understood he suffered a stroke in February 2023 and a series of other strokes followed.
He died, aged 77, at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey, in March 2023 and the death certificate — in his new identity — gives the cause as pneumonia and stroke. News of his death was not made public until the following month after his funeral and burial had taken place.
Last week the high court ruled that Scappaticci’s will should be sealed until 2095, a level of secrecy previously only afforded to the estates of members of the royal family.
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Kevin Winters, solicitor for several families of Stakeknife’s victims, said some of his clients planned to make a legal bid to unseal Scappaticci’s will so they could claim damages from the estate.
“This news has reminded families of their status as second-class conflict victims,” said Winters. “The stigma they have endured over the decades has now been reinforced by the very state agencies supposedly tasked with removing such stigma.”
Gavin Booth, another lawyer for victim families, said it was perverse for the courts to seal the will and say it was against the public interest to publish it in the normal way.
He said: “This man is at the centre of a series of civil cases taken by families against the state for the murder of their loved ones. Surely disclosure of his will is in the public interest in circumstances where proceedings have been issued over his actions”.