Will of man believed to be Stakeknife will not be made public, High Court rules

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The will of a man believed to be the IRA agent known as Stakeknife will not be made public, the High Court has ruled.

Freddie Scappaticci, who changed his name to Frank Cowley in 2020, was believed to be Britain’s top agent inside the IRA.

Scappaticci, from west Belfast, had always denied the claims before his death aged 77 in 2023.

In a ruling on Monday, Sir Julian Flaux ordered that Scappaticci’s will should be sealed for 70 years, meaning that its contents will not be made public.

The judge said that this is the first time, except for members of the royal family, where a court has ordered that a will not be made open to public inspection in the way the document would usually be.

He said: “There is nothing in the will, which is in fairly standard form, which could conceivably be of interest to the public or the media.”

A hearing to decide whether the will should be sealed was held on July 21 and was closed to the public and the media.

Barristers for the Attorney General, who represents the public interest in such matters, supported the will being sealed at the hearing in London, Sir Julian said.

The court heard that a man named Michael Johnson was prepared to represent Scappaticci’s interests provided that the will was sealed.

Christopher Buckley, representing Mr Johnson, said that making Scappaticci’s will publicly available would be “undesirable” and “inappropriate”, and that Mr Johnson feared his life being put at risk if the will was made open to inspection.

Sir Julian said that there was “the need to protect (Mr Johnson) and those named in the will from the real risk of serious physical harm or even death because they might be thought to be guilty by association” with Scappaticci.

He said: “The real risk to his life and wellbeing which the deceased faced in his lifetime is amply demonstrated.”

He continued: “Publication of the will would be both undesirable and inappropriate.”

The judge concluded that holding the hearing in public would have “defeated the whole object” of the bid to have the will sealed.

Sir Julian said in his 18-page ruling that Scappaticci was alleged to have been a leading member of the Provisional IRA, and was part of the “Nutting Squad” from around 1980 until the mid-1990s, which interrogated suspected informers during the Troubles.

In 2003, media reports claimed that Scappaticci had spied on the IRA for the British government, and that while working for both organisations, “was responsible for the torture and murder of dozens of alleged IRA informers”.

Scappaticci always denied the claim but failed in a legal bid to force the British government to publicly state that he was not Stakeknife, forcing him to move to England in 2003.

Sir Julian said: “He could not have remained in Northern Ireland, as he could have been killed by one side or the other.

“Even after he moved to England and changed his name, he continued to receive death threats.

“Such was their nature that he had to relocate at short notice several times over the years.”

Operation Kenova was then launched to probe the activities of Stakeknife within the Provisional IRA and crimes such as murder and torture, as well as the role played by the security services.

The probe, which was undertaken by Bedfordshire Police and cost tens of millions of pounds, reported its interim findings last year, after Scappaticci’s death.

While it stopped short of naming him as Stakeknife, it found that more lives were probably lost than saved by the agent’s actions.

The former Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police and author of the interim report, Jon Boutcher, said that the identity of Stakeknife “will have to be confirmed at some point” but that he would “have to leave this to my final report”.

He said: “For now, it suffices to say that Mr Scappaticci was and still is inextricably bound up with and a critical person of interest at the heart of Operation Kenova.”

He continued: “I believe that we found strong evidence of very serious criminality on the part of Mr Scappaticci and his prosecution would have been in the interests of victims, families and justice.”

Prosecutors said at the time the interim report was published that the examination of files containing evidence of serious criminality by Scappaticci was at an advanced stage at the time of his death.