A former British army intelligence agent last night (Sunday) questioned if Brian Nelson, the loyalist paramilitary who also acted as a British agent, was dead.
Mystery has surrounded the whereabouts of the former Force Research Unit (FRU) agent since he reportedly died of a brain haemorrhage in April this year.
While it was claimed that Nelson had died in Florida, US secretary of state Colin Powell last week stated that Nelson was never given permission to live in the USA since his release from jail in the mid 1990s.
Despite Nelson's reported death, no details of his funeral have ever been made public. But a former FRU handler, who uses the pseudonym Martin Ingram, last night questioned whether or not Nelson was dead.
"I don't know if Brian Nelson is actually dead, but I would personally doubt it," he said.
"From what I was told, Nelson was not resettled in America, but on the other side of the world."
Asked why he thinks Nelson may still be alive, the former soldier said: "It would suit a lot of people to say that Brian Nelson is dead, wouldn't it?
"Colin Powell and the Bush administration can't lie because of the Freedom of Information Act which governs the US, but there are no such rules to stop the British government telling lies.
"The only person who knows for definite that Brian Nelson is dead is John Stevens and he's saying nothing.
"All I know is that it suited a lot of people that Brian Nelson was reported dead four days before the Stevens report came out.
"Is Brian Nelson alive or dead? I doubt whether we'll ever know the truth about that and a lot of other things."
