The British government has provisionally agreed to pay \u00a310 million to the families of those abducted, murdered or interrogated by its double agents in the IRA.<\/p>\n
Principal among them was west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, known as Stakeknife, who operated in the IRA’s internal security unit, hunting suspected informers.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he was passing information to British Army intelligence and other branches of the security forces.<\/p>\n
A Belfast law firm KRW Law acts for 19 families whose loved ones were murdered by the IRA.<\/p>\n
It said it had been in “advanced negotiations” with the British government over a settlement of their cases for damages.<\/p>\n
Between them the families have taken 34 legal actions, with some cases involving separate litigation by different relatives in respect of the same incident.<\/p>\n
Nine of the families are receiving payments in respect of the actions of an agent who was not Scappaticci.<\/p>\n
It is suggested that this points to a greater number of security force agents in the ranks of the IRA’s internal security unit than had been previously thought.<\/p>\n
Kevin Winters of the KRW Law said a “consensus” had been reached with government officials over a settlement.<\/p>\n
It is now subject to approval by the Northern Ireland Policing Board.<\/p>\n
“Given the possible time lag for board approval triggering extensive media speculation, we want to put these matters on record now,” Mr Winters said.<\/p>\n
“In doing so we are mindful of the sensitivities engaged with all the Plaintiffs and want to commend them for their patience.<\/p>\n
“The agreed collective figure across all the litigation amounts to around \u00a310 million,” he added.<\/p>\n
Mr Winters said the ending of the litigation provided “additional leverage” to the PSNI Chief Constable’s call for an apology to the families.<\/p>\n
There has been no admission of liability by the British State.<\/p>\n
Scappaticci passed information to the security forces from the late seventies until the 1990s.<\/p>\n
He died in 2023 in England where he had been relocated after being unmasked in Belfast.<\/p>\n
Last year a long-running inquiry linked Scappaticci to 14 murders and 15 abductions during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
The Kenova investigation lasted nine years and cost almost \u00a350m.<\/p>\n
It found that while army intelligence had been principally responsible for running Stakeknife, the security service MI5 was also closely involved in his handling.<\/p>\n
The report found protecting Stakeknife’s identity was more important than protecting people who could and should have been saved.<\/p>\n
It said he had probably taken more lives than he had saved.<\/p>\n
The government has so far refused to confirm Scappaticci’s role as a spy, sticking to its policy of ‘Neither Confirm nor Deny’ when it comes to agents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British government has provisionally agreed to pay \u00a310 million to the families of those abducted, murdered or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-543713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}