Group adds worldly expertise as ‘double agent’ inquiry gives voice to victims’ families

The world of policing is joining an investigation as it uncovers “significant new evidence” into more than 50 murders linked to the British Army’s notorious double agent Stakeknife during The Troubles.

Victims’ families have told stories never divulged before at the start of an inquiry by Bedfordshire Police Chief Constable Jon Boutcher into the high-ranking mole who led the IRA’s “nutting squad” internal security unit while in the employ of the State.

A group of six international experts have been appointed on a voluntary basis to a steering committee assisting with the independent examination.

They include two senior officers from the US, a Scottish deputy chief constable, an ex-Australian deputy police commissioner, a policing reformer and a former Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (PONI).

A second team of six victims’ representatives have been added to address the needs of Stakeknife’s alleged victims and their families.

In 2003 Stakeknife was widely named as West Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci but he has always strongly denied the allegation.

Mr Boutcher said: “This week we have heard things that from what the families have told me they have never told anyone before, because nobody has asked them.

“What I have been told is significant evidence against the people responsible for these offences.”

He has asked the victims’ families to give him time to investigate and recover the evidence.

“It is incredible what I have heard,” he added.

“There is a pessimism which I understand, I completely get, because people felt let down and almost abandoned.

“It almost feels like their rights were taken away from them because of the nature of what happened to their loved ones.

“They have now got a voice and that is this investigation, and they told me of what they saw at that time that they have never been able to tell anybody before and we need people to do that.”

The investigation is centred on possible crimes by paramilitaries, agents and Army and police handlers linked to Stakeknife, allegedly the military’s highest-ranking spy within the IRA.

Multiple murders, attempted murders and unlawful imprisonments are included in the inquiry.

New York Police Department deputy commissioner for intelligence and counter-terrorism John Miller and Mike Downing, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, will be part of the expert advisory group.

It will also include former PONI Nuala O’Loan and Kathleen O’Toole, part of the Patten Commission that reformed policing in Northern Ireland.

Iain Livingstone, deputy chief constable with Police Scotland, and Nick Kaldas, a former Australian deputy commissioner of police in New South Wales who has been working with the UN on a Hezbollah inquiry in the Middle East, complete the group.

“It’s a complex investigation by any measure and it spans a number of years – the investigations team has already hit the ground running,” said Mr Kaldas who believes he has been approached because of his work investigating the assassinations of 21 people in Lebanon and his extensive homicide investigation experience in his own country.

“I am humbled and quite honoured for an Australian to be asked to be part of this, and I saw it as really important in getting the truth and getting justice and closure for the families of the victims.”

He acknowledged the sensitivity of investigating the British army for crimes against Irish Catholics during the Troubles but referenced public pressure as one of the main factors behind the investigation.

“I think the pain being felt by the victims’ families, the voices reached a crescendo and they decided to lance the boil, have an inquiry and hopefully that will get everyone closure,” added Mr Kaldas who will travel to the UK in December.

The victims’ representatives include Alan McBride, bereaved in the IRA’s Shankill Road fish shop bombing; Victims Commissioner Judith Thompson and Mary Fetchet, who founded Voices of September 11 following the death of her son at the World Trade Centre in 2001.

The