Stakeknife Freddie Scappaticci was staying at his favourite Italian hotel
yesterday after fleeing west Belfast amid threats from former IRA comrades.
The final straw for the agent who bumped off IRA members while earning up
to £80,000-a-year as a tout for the British Army came in a series of
articles in The People and the publication of a book about his secret
double life.
A senior security source revealed yesterday: "Mr Scappaticci was warned ten
days ago that his life was in imminent danger from republicans.
"He was told to take precautions and advised that he should move from his
home in west Belfast.
"He has now done that."
Last month The People revealed the Italian bolthole where Stakeknife
planned to retire with the fortune he earned as a tout.
Incredibly, on Friday night, Freddie Scappaticci was back in the hotel he
fled to when he was first exposed as an agent for the Force Research Unit
in this paper last May.
A receptionist at Hotel La Pace - talking to an Italian-speaking People
reporter - confirmed: "Si, Freddie Scappaticci e qui. (Yes, Mr Freddie
Scappaticci is here)."
She then put us through to his room, but there was no answer.
The receptionist added: "Sei un amico? Si ti chiama pui tarde poi parlare
adesso ma deve chiamare un altro linea. (Are you a friend? If you call back
later on a different number, you can talk to him then.)"
There was no answer from room 653 last night. A new receptionist insisted
Scap had checked out early yesterday.
Scappaticci, number two in the IRA's internal security unit for 20 years,
could be heard on an internet tape recording two weeks ago naming alleged
senior members of the IRA to journalists from the Cook Report in August
1993.
More damning claims from the man involved in the culling of up to 35 IRA
members - some informers and some not - were the final straw for
republicans.
On one the tapes - first revealed in The People last July - Scap could also
be heard describing IRA interrogation methods.
He says: "See, when they have anyone the standard procedure is to strip
them and de-bug them, right? Just to see if they are wired up or whatever.
"Then they usually put a boiler suit on them. They put them in chair facing
the wall, right, and go from there.
"See, when people say now they [the IRA] use a lot of violence, they don't
really. Physical violence they don't use now. They use mental violence
obviously, you know.
"It's a psychological thing. They get you into a room. They blindfold you,
strip you. They have you sitting there, right.
"Maybe the room's cold. They make you all sorts of promises, and everybody
being what they are has a breaking point you know. And they think there are
going to go home...but they don't!"
There is growing concern within the IRA at Scappaticci's role as an
informer, particularly in how he helped the FRU and Special Branch set up
the arrest in 1990 of Sinn Féin publicity director Danny Morrison.
The IRA later helped to provide an alibi for Scap. That move is now being
investigated.
Ironically on the same 1993 tapes, Scappaticci slags off Morrison, calling
him a 'pen pusher'.
"He was Director of Publicity. But he was also on the IRA Army Council, but
he had no balls and that's basically it. He was a pen pusher, if you want
to put it that way," Scappaticci can he heard saying on the tape.
A voice analysis between his exclusive interview for BBC Newsline last May
and the recordings made in the car park of the Culloden Hotel in 1993 show
beyond all doubt that the recordings are authentic.
Last night a senior republican source in west Belfast confirmed the IRA was
now preparing to go public on Scappaticci.
"Firstly there are the very serious allegations made about Scap in
Stakeknife: Britain's Secret Agents in Ireland.
"The transcripts of the Cook Report tapes make for devastating reading in
the book and their subsequent release on an internet website has confirmed,
at the very least, that Scap had a big mouth and was prepared to shaft
people who saw him as a comrade.
"He would be a very foolish man to return to Belfast from Italy now," said
the source.
There has been speculation in some republican circles that IRA members have
openly boasted that they will defy the Provo ceasefire to attack
Scappaticci, though the PIRA leadership has refused to sanction any attack.
The flight of Stakeknife comes just 12 days after a High Court action by
him was adjourned in unusual circumstances.
Scap was due to appeal against the dismissal of his judicial review last
August when he lost a bid to force Security Minister Jane Kennedy to
confirm he was not the agent alleged to have supplied the Army with high
grade intelligence.
Mr Scappaticci's lawyer, Michael Lavery QC, told Lord Chief Justice Sir
Brian Kerr that he was applying for an adjournment and the judge indicated
that the court had received a letter giving the reason for the application.
Declan Morgan QC, for the Minister, said he, too, had seen the letter and
was not objecting to the case being adjourned.
The reason for the adjournment was not revealed and, when Mr Scappaticci's
lawyer was asked about it outside the court, he declined to comment.
The Lord Chief Justice said it would be put in for mention again on April
23.
