Police get additional time to question man in Stakeknife probe

Sources named the detained man as Freddie Scappaticci, who has always strongly denied he was a military intelligence informer.

He was detained on Tuesday by officers from Operation Kenova.

The Kenova team, led by Bedfordshire Police Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, is probing claims of murder, kidnap and torture between the late 1970s and early 1990s.

Agent Stakeknife reputedly led the IRA’s ‘nutting squad’ – an internal security unit which brutally interrogated and murdered suspected informants in its ranks. Jon Boutcher’s team has processed more than 500,000 pages of information which generated 1,500 lines of enquiry.

Families of victims of the IRA’s ‘nutting squad’ have been demanding to know what the police and Army knew about Stakeknife’s crimes at the time and whether they could have been prevented.

Then Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory QC referred a number of the allegations to the PSNI.