IRA spy unmasked

Belfast, U.K.

A top member of the Irish Republican Army’s internal security has been exposed as a British spy of more than 25 years. Freddy Scappaticci raked in $150,000 a year as the notorious “Stakeknife,” a British asset in the IRA’s secretive disciplinary arm, which ferrets out, interrogates, and executes IRA informers. To protect his cover, Scappaticci almost certainly ordered some of his fellow British agents killed. Several British newspapers broke Scappaticci’s cover this week in stories that accused him of having personally tortured and murdered dozens of people. Some of the victims, the papers allege, were innocent Catholics who were scapegoated to divert IRA attention from real informers. Scappaticci is now in a safe house.