Who exactly was Freddie Scappaticci: the IRA executioner and alleged prize informant from its own informer-hunting 'Nutting Squad'?

Although he is widely reported merely as being the man suspected of being Stakeknife - UK intelligence's top informer inside the IRA - it is generally accepted that he indeed was (though he had denied it).

The cause of his death is not yet known.

It also transpired this evening that Scappaticci's funeral has already taken place, with him having died several days ago.

Whilst he hunted down suspected informers in the IRA and killed them during the mid-to-late Troubles, he was in fact passing material himself to the security services.

His former double-life began to unravel in May 2003 when his name seeped out into the public domain as a high-level informer, not long before the publication of the book Stakeknife, written by a former member of the UK military using the pseudonym Martin Ingram.

A string of news sources published the allegation, which was denied by Scappaticci, who went into hiding not long after.

According to an article from the time in The People of London by Ingram, Scappaticci was the son of an Italian immigrant who came to Belfast in the 1920s.

The family ran ice-cream parlours, and Alfredo was said to have at one stage eyed a career as a professional footballer, being offered a trial in 1962 with Notts Forest.

He was said to have been among a raft of republicans interned in the early '70s, and went on to work as a builder.

He is rumoured to have simply walked into a police station in 1978 to volunteer his services as a paid informer after a disagreement with a fellow republican.

He is thought to have been a member of the IRA's Internal Security Unit (aka Nutting Squad) from around 1980 to the mid-1990s.

Ingram said Scappaticci hated Martin McGuiness in particular, and even briefed journalists with information about him.

Eamon Collins was one of the few men – perhaps the only one – who worked directly alongside Scappaticci in the IRA, and went on to tell about it in detail.

Collins was a former IRA man who later turned against the organisation, became a supergrass, recanted his testimony, and ultimately wrote a book about his life, revealing secrets of the IRA machine.

Collins wrote in his book Killing Rage about a particular occasion when he spent time with Scappaticci and another Nutting Squad member:

"One time I sat in a house with them to await the arrival of some men who had just been released from police custody.

"The woman of the house had made us tea. [X] and Scap started reminiscing about past experiences. I asked them whether I would personally be expected to shoot informers.

"Scap, his mouth full, said that when the time arrived I would have to do it. I asked whether they always told people that they were going to be shot. Scap said it depended on the circumstances.

"He turned to [X] and started joking about one informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty. Scap told the man that he would take him home, reassuring him that he had nothing to worry about.

"Scap had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as they walked away from the car.

"'It was funny,' he said, 'watching the bastard stumbling and falling, asking me as he felt his way along railings and walls, 'Is this my house now'" and I'd say, 'No, not yet, walk on some more...'

"'... and then you shot the fucker in the back of the head,' said [X], and both of them burst out laughing."

It is not known how many people he killed, directly or indirectly, although speculation often errs around the dozens, sometimes scores.

Scappaticci was never convicted of murdering anyone, although he had been subject to a string of investigations in the final years of his life, including the still-open Operation Kenova led by English police officer Jon Boutcher, which has tried to unravel as much of his activities as possible.

However, Scappattici was convicted in 2018 of possessing (non-child) extreme pornography.

Upon learning of his death tonight, Kenny Donaldson, spokesman for Troubles victims' charity the South East Fermanagh foundation, said: "Our thoughts this evening are with those innocents whose loved ones were callously kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the Provisional IRA's nutting squad as well as wider crimes alleged to have been committed by Freddie Scappaticci.

"It is highly probable that a number of those murdered were not informants but were sacrificial lambs in the protection of others.

"And for those who were involved as members of the Provisional IRA and who then became informants, there was never justification for the brutality of violence which they had visited upon them, neither The Provisional IRA nor any terrorist organisation had a right to discharge duties as judge, jury and executioner.

"We have also been consistent in our position that anyone who acted with criminal-based intent within the intelligence or security services should be held accountable for such actions.

"No-one ever had the right to play the role of God, and however much so-called context people try to argue, it cannot and does not extinguish criminal wrongdoing."

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