IRA double agent 'Stakeknife' forced to flee Ireland as cover is blown

A new wave of allegations of Army intelligence misbehaviour has accompanied the naming at the weekend of a Belfast republican described as a key security force asset in the upper ranks of the IRA.

The man was identified in several newspapers as "Stakeknife," an Army agent who for years held senior posts in the IRA and provided voluminous information to military intelligence. There has been no official confirmation of Stakeknife's identity but the agent is now under investigation by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who has already reported up to a score of people, including police and Army personnel, to the Northern Ireland director of public prosecutions.

Sir John's detectives are to question Stakeknife in the near future. The allegation is that Army intelligence officers turned a blind eye to their agent's involvement in murders because his information was so valuable to them.

The west Belfast republican named as Stakeknife, who comes from a large family with a strong republican background, was last night understood to have left Northern Ireland. One report said he may have been taken to a British military intelligence base in Dorset.

Sir John Stevens said yesterday: "We will be questioning Stakeknife soon. We fear other informants have been sacrificed to save him and we will be asking him about that."

Stakeknife, who lived at addresses in both Belfast and Dublin and was interned during the 1970s, was regarded as having close associations with the Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. The Government paid him up to £80,000 a year, using a secret bank account, for information he was able to provide as it waged its war against militant republicans.

Among Stakeknife's IRA roles was that of a senior member of its "Security Department," which was responsible for catching and killing informers. One suspicion is that he had powers of life and death over suspected informers and agents. The possibility is that he was, with the sanction of the Army, deciding whether those being held by the IRA should live or die.

Sinn Fein refused to comment on the claims about the affair. A party spokesman said: "There won't be anybody saying anything about this."

The Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, said he was not shocked that the British security forces had apparently penetrated so far into the IRA. He added: "It is the key way in which the paramilitaries have been ground down and brought close to defeat in Northern Ireland.

"The authorities' job is to get intelligence, that means turning people who are members of paramilitary organisations or finding someone who will penetrate them."