Showing posts with label Informers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Informers. Show all posts
Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ I have never been able to get my head round those people who work for the occupying forces, any occupying forces in any country, and what makes them tick.

During the Second World War there were those in France who collaborated with the Nazis during their country’s occupation. Why would they do this? The same question I ask of those British citizens residing in the Channel Islands, the only part of Britain under German occupation, who collaborated with the Nazi and informed on their fellow islanders. Some of these creatures even gave away the names of Jewish people living on the islands knowing this information would lead to the victims of informing, certain deaths. The British Army and government when they were rampaging around the world stealing other people’s lands, calling it an ‘empire,’ used people as informers and even soldiers in their army, usually to do the dirty work of the British.

The British Government of all political shades, dating back to the Whigs and Torys long before a Labour party came on the parliamentary scene have used and abused natives to work for them. Promising the earth to these soulless aboriginal peoples who have worked for their colonial masters only to be dumped like a piece of rubbish when no longer needed. 

During the Mao Mao uprising in Kenya (1952-60) British forces used and abused native people to help crush the rebellion. When they had outlived their usefulness, they were left to their grizzly fate, normally death in a violent fashion. When many of them wished to leave Kenya and come to Britain they were often told, ‘go home’ if they were not required to do some shitty job the locals would not do.

During the ‘War of Independence’ in Ireland the British used informers, many of whom were loyalist by nature and took no persuading, while others were not loyalist by nature and wanted to earn a few shillings, by giving information for cash. What they did not expect was the British would, after using them, just dump them for the insurgent republican forces to collect, interrogate and usually kill. The British would then call the IRA murders while washing their hands on any involvement in the informer’s death. Twenty years later when the French Resistance carried out exactly the same punishments as those by the IRA the French were credited as ‘brave freedom fighter’s’. There is no doubt the French Resistance were ‘brave freedom fighters’ but so too were the IRA.

In more recent times the occupying British forces in the six counties have continued this tradition of using and abusing local people to gather information. They even allowed ‘murder’ to take place in order to protect an informer or agent. The Force Research Unit (FRU) were particularly guilty of these acts of hanging people out to dry which, nine times out of ten, resulted in the person being killed. Back in 2005 when the ‘Stormont Assembly’ was getting off the ground as part of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ it was suddenly revealed that Denis Donaldson, MLA, had been working for the British for many years. The British threatened to reveal his identity which forced him to publicly admit his crimes against the republican cause. Why did the British suggest his cover had been blown? Did they blow it? Was the threat to ‘reveal his identity’ an attempt by the Crown to cover their own tracks? One thing is for sure, Donaldson knew too much not only about the Republican Movement but also the British Army and their agents. He was found dead in 2006 in County Donegal in the twenty-six-counties. The Real IRA, a post GFA splinter group, later claimed they were responsible for Donaldson's assassination but the British also had good reason for wanting him dead. Could the SAS have been responsible? Either way Donaldsons collusion with the British Crown cost him his life.

Coming a little more up to date and Afghanistan the British were at it again. Many Afghans who were anti-Taliban fought with or for the British. Now, there is no harm in being anti-Taliban, no harm at all, but would it not have been better for these people to join a local Afghan anti-Taliban group as opposed to the British occupiers, albeit junior occupiers after the USA? Some of these Afghans went on to train as ‘special forces’ trained by the British and also used by them, forming special forces units in the new Afghan Army. That army turned out to be not very good and when the US and British left they crumbled before the Taliban onslaught. So much for British training!

Many of these former Afghan Army soldiers were given sanctuary in neighbouring Pakistan. Remember these men had put their lives on the line against the Taliban choosing instead to fight for or alongside the British, not a good move at the best of times. In return these cannon fodder received what passed for training which turned out to be inadequate against the Taliban. Feeling safe in Pakistan these one-time stooges of the Crown felt safe until, recently, all this feeling of security collapsed. The Pakistani Government has decided, in their wisdom, that these men will be returned to Afghanistan and the now governing Taliban! Their former users, the British, appear to have washed their hands of these men who now face, if returned, certain death. British armed forces minister, James Heappey himself a former soldier who served in Afghanistan, has expressed his “sickness” at the thought of these “former comrades in arms” being returned to Afghanistan. He also indicated that not all “qualify” for British citizenship even if they have “been special forces” personnel serving with or alongside the British Army. These men have been used, abused, by the British to do their dirty work probably against their own countrymen, possibly torturing people for the British and USA, only now to be now told tough luck you’re on your own! They were used to fight a war the British and the Yanks eventually lost, both running like fuck from the maniacal Taliban, and now the Pakistani Government are going to hand them back to these same nutters calling themselves a government in Afghanistan!

No doubt the British Foreign Office will keep quiet about what is happening, hoping it will go away. So far only brief reports have been heard on the news and, no doubt, if these reports lead to protest, a D notice will be put out. A D notice is “advising” the press and media in general not to put out certain information which might be a threat to “national security.” Such notices are voluntary, but editors always comply. It perhaps does not take a great leap in the imagination to work out what may happen to any editor or news channel who does not heed this “advice”!

There is a simple moral to this tale and that is beware strange men bearing gifts because it usually means the only gift you will receive involves waste ground, a sawn-off shotgun and a burial. Be it in Ireland, 1919-21 and more recently, France, during World War Two, or more recent times in Afghanistan the results are always the same. It may be true that some governments are better at looking after their agents and informers than are others. Unfortunately for so many the British Government are not among their numbers. No informers, touts, agents call them what you wish can claim they did not know the outcome once their evil deeds are unearthed. Those who say they will protect their pet grasses often are the cause of these creatures being unearthed. Don’t do it, as it is bad for your health!!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Don’t Work For The British – Or Any Other Imperialist User!

Anthony McIntyre ☠ It has been an uncomfortable week for former members of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit, both those who worked for the British and those who didn’t. 

Such is the feeding frenzy that anything in the water looking remotely like one of the headhunters is regarded as food to be dissected and devoured, their own heads hunted.

Last week in the space of a few days, allegations emerged against two people reported in the media as having previously plied their counterintelligence trade in the ISU. One, Paddy Monaghan, is deceased. The allegations against him appeared in Sunday Life which claimed he had been outed. Yet the content of the article does not substantiate the outing. It was a string of suspicions expressed by people who either were, or claimed to be, former colleagues of Monaghan. Oddly, there was nobody from the British intelligence services cited in support of the supposed outing.

The other was said by the Irish News to have fled his home in West Belfast. This was later disputed by the man’s solicitor. The journalist Allison Morris also reported that he had been seen drinking with friends in West Belfast.

Unfortunately for the person alleged to have upped sticks, Danny Morrison weighed in to cast doubt on the claims made in the Irish News, accusing the paper of inventing the story. To the man at the centre of the allegations this was as helpful as the kiss of death, immediately giving rise to a surge of suspicion in the already active whisper world. Morrison had previously covered up for Scappaticci’s role in the British state’s Dirty War when he was first outed so, to many, it prompted the thought of here we go again, same old, same old.

The accused man, by now, must be sitting in his abode terrified in case Adam O’Toole of An Phoblacht wades in to back him. O’Toole’s cover-up for Scappaticci was described by the journalist Suzanne Breen as holding “pride of place in all the tripe trundled out … it’s unbelievable that anybody took the garbage it printed seriously.”

Morrison and his ilk, because they were “willing participants” in Britain’s dirty war, using their influence to deflect people away from what it actually was, have diminished the likelihood of a queue forming this time around to buy anything that even smells like cover-up. Their dissembling has fueled an equal and opposite reaction whereby people will be inclined to believe the opposite of whatever Danny Morrison tells them. 

Moreover, we might wonder why Morrison would challenge the Irish News story no matter how correct he might have been in his assertions that the 'well known West Belfast republican' had not fled his home.  He had to know that his contribution, given his role in the Scappaticci cover-up, rather than exonerate the individual in the eye of the storm, would have made him a person of interest to many observers. 

Ahead of the Kenova Report being published the rumour mill will be indulging in foreplay in anticipation of the climax many either expect or hope for. There will be no shortage of people willing to believe anything so long as it is whispered to them. For that very reason, in the interest of fairness and accuracy, the bar should be high. Sinn Fein lowered it considerably by its cover-up for Scappaticci, making it easy for critics to hurl accusations around, and difficult for the accused to defend against particularly if Danny Morrison is in their corner.

Those culpable of working for the British in their Dirty War have no right to see their role buried along with their victims. Whether through choice or coercion, their decision was heinous. Those not working for the British, no matter how much of the Sinn Fein Kool-Aid they have either doled out or consumed, have every right not to be wrongly accused.

If there is a substantive belief that certain people were agents of the British, then the allegation should only ever be openly levelled because it is rooted in an authentic perspective and grounded in evidence. It is not a charge to be contrived merely to smear an opponent.

Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

World Of Whispers

Anthony McIntyre ✒ Twenty-two years ago today in West Belfast’s Ballymurphy estate, the Provisional IRA carried out a shoot to kill operation

Its target was Joe O’Connor, a senior figure in the city’s Real IRA. O’Connor was killed as he sat unarmed in a car talking to a relative. His companion was unharmed. The killing was discriminate. The IRA got who it came for. To this day it has not admitted its role.

A few days later myself and Tommy Gorman wrote in the Irish News that it was a state killing, albeit one carried out by the Provisional IRA. Our reason for characterizing it as such was that Martin McGuinness at the time was on the army council that authorised the killing while simultaneously serving in the Stormont state administration as the education minister for the North.

That is not to say he was personally responsible. But the structural links between the IRA leadership and the Stormont state administration coupled with the corporate responsibility that cannot be evaded by individuals at the top of corporations made our suggestion that it was a state killing an arguable case.

In recent days, that assertion, now two decades old, has even more to buttress it.

The family of the late Joe O’Connor has launched a legal action against the office of the Police Ombudsman on the grounds that it allegedly failed to investigate the role of a person the family believes to have been a British state agent. The Ombudsman’s office was first requested in 2012 to examine the circumstances surrounding the killing and last year was asked to focus specifically on the alleged role of a person referred to as Agent Christine. The Irish News reported that Agent Christine was alleged to have been “one of the main protagonists” in the daylight execution. 

It was also reported by the paper that the solicitor representing the family, Michael Brentnall, had claimed that his office was in receipt of information:

that an RUC Special Branch asset was involved in the murder of Joseph O’Connor. We believe this information came to light as a result of the break in at Castlereagh Special Branch Offices in 2002. We are informed that the individual held the codename Christine … we are now aware that this individual rose to further prominence within the republican movement after the murder and subsequently was involved in serious criminality.

The legal firm went on to detail more accusations against the person.

Immediately after Joe O’Connor was killed, the Provisional IRA, Sinn Fein and the RUC all moved to close down any speculation as to what body might have been responsible. Within hours the RUC raided the offices of Republican Sinn Fein in what was a diversionary tactic. The IRA denied any culpability and offered its condolences to the dead man’s family - a deception tactic. From the mutual entanglement of shared interests both institutions were parents of a strategic subterfuge.

IRA leadership figures visited my home in a vain bid to coerce my silence on the matter. After briefing journalists with spin, Sinn Fein placed mobs outside my own home and that of my co-writer of the Irish News piece, Tommy Gorman.

At the inquest into Joe O’Connor’s death the coroner criticised the RUC for not having made a single arrest after the killing. The force was obviously not interested in investigating those behind it. Even though we would not have cooperated, it never once approached me or Tommy Gorman for the purpose of ascertaining who we had spoken to that enabled us to identify with certainty the organisation responsible. Contrast that with how the PSNI hared off in pursuit of the Boston College tapes, ostensibly as part of an investigation into another killing which, previously, it had shown no interest in.

The behaviour of both the Provisional Movement and the RUC around the killing of Joe O’Connor suggest that this was collusion on tour. While collusion is not an illusion, it is a term that causes confusion. There are some who think it means the state forces colluding only with the loyalist agencies.

The identity of the person alleged to be Agent Christine is an open secret in Ballymurphy and wider afield. He is said now to cut an isolated figure, with many of his closest erstwhile companions having concluded that he is a “wrong one”. Agent or not, he was party to:

  • the Sinn Fein led mob picketing of our homes
  • the distribution of leaflets which led to the PSNI arriving at our door with a warning that it considered us to be under threat
  • dissuading members of the community turning out in traditional community solidarity in July 2003 during an unlawful police search of our home
  • smearing us at public meetings in West Belfast

In my experience this is consistent with the modus operandi employed by other agents in their bid to protect the Provisional leadership from probing or scrutiny. It is not, however, conclusive proof.

Is this individual Agent Christine? Although, I continue to mull it over, I cannot be definitive about it. If he was working for the British state, he was hardly alone in that role within the ranks of the Ballymurphy IRA, as the RUC killing of Pearse Jordan in November 1992 would strongly suggest.

Two killings in the same street, in the same week but thirteen years apart, of a grandfather and his grandson, both homicides seemingly involving agents of the British state. That was a seriously loud fuck you to the supposed rule of law, in essence amounting to a brazen assertion of the rule of law enforcement. 

Thirty-five years after the first and twenty two after the second, the family of both slain men is resolute in its determination not to be sent round the Mulberry Bush. Instead through its legal action it has opted to unearth the poisonous roots at the bottom of the bush which have nutrified its noxious special branch.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Agent Christine

With the Taliban now firming back in control of Afghanistan and Coalition leaders licking their political wounds, contentious commentator Dr John Coulter puts forward his own solution to defeating the Taliban.

Taliban tales that women’s rights and Afghan citizens who assisted the Coalition forces are safe from radical Islamic reprisals are about as daft as Sinn Fein spin that Unionists will have their culture fully recognised in a Shinner-run United Ireland. ‘It ain’t gonna happen!’

The people I really feel sorry for are the relatives of Coalition forces killed during the decade-long war in Afghanistan as well as the veterans of that campaign who were wounded and maimed both physically and emotionally.

And whilst the Coalition is organising Saigon-style evacuation flights out of Afghanistan, there will still be thousands of Afghan citizens and supporters of the Coalition left behind to face the Taliban’s eventual wrath.

Oh yes, the Taliban in the immediate future is portraying itself as a moderate Muslim movement which will fully respect the rights of those who do not strictly adhere to the Taliban’s warped interpretation of the Quran and especially Sharia law.

This tactic was only to prevent a full-scale invasion again of Afghanistan by the Coalition forces as the Taliban has not yet fully asserted its authority in every hamlet, village, town and city in the country.

In hard military terms, the Afghan government and army - much like the South Vietnamese government and army in the 1960s and 1970s - do not have the will or the capacity to combat Taliban terrorism.

The Americans, as part of the Coalition forces, tried to fight the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army for over a decade in Vietnam using conventional military tactics deployed in Korea and World War Two. In 1975, the Americans left Saigon with their military tails between their legs.

What did all those - mainly young - Americans die for in Vietnam? You need only visit the memorial wall to the dead from Vietnam to appreciate the suffering and sacrifice which the American forces endured.

Now to Afghanistan. What must the loved ones left behind of those killed and wounded among the Coalition forces be thinking as Coalition political leaders scramble to find excuses to leaving the country.

The Coalition should never have left Afghanistan without first 100 per cent guaranteeing that the Afghan army and government was capable and competent enough to keep the lid firmly on any Taliban activity.

The decision of the ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden administration in Washington to totally pull out of Afghanistan at this point must rank as one of the most idiotic of any American Presidency in the history of the United States.

Moscow tried the strong arm approach in Afghanistan and the Russians eventually left with their tails between their legs. The Taliban are spinning its takeover of the country as ‘victory’ over the Coalition forces.

By this Christmas, the Taliban will have ensured that its militant version of the Islamic faith and laws will be enforced on the country.

A number of years ago, I got into a lot of hot water for a satirical piece I published on using nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry to defeat ISIS terrorists.

The point being, given the vast arsenals which the Coalition countries possess, conventionally armed Taliban terrorists sent the Coalition political leadership (not the Coalition personnel on the ground) packing.

The big worry for Western nations, indeed for any nation which has a democratic government, freedom of worship for faith communities and a free press, is whether the Taliban ‘victory’ in Afghanistan will spark fundamentalist Islamic groups to start similar terrorist revolutions in other states.

There’s no use indulging in the blame game over the Coalition’s ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan. We can all moan until the cows come home that the Coalition left the country well before the Afghan government and army was fully equipped to deal with a resurgent Taliban.

The key question still remains - how can we now defeat the Taliban? The answer is brutally simple; use the same tactics which the British forces used to defeat the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s and the Provos during the Troubles.

The British identified those within both the Mau Mau and republican movement ranks that they could ‘turn’ as informers, agents to manipulate a ceasefire.

In terms of Ireland, north and south, you need only read the many books which have been penned about the intelligence war - or dirty war - by ex-soldiers or agents to appreciate the value of ‘turning’ republican activists into effective agents of the state.

And for those who cannot be ‘turned’, the special forces can always ensure they are eliminated in a ‘convenient’ ambush. Take the Loughgall ambush in May 1987 when the SAS wiped out the once-feared East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional IRA. An innocent civilian also died in that ambush.

Would the Adams-McGuinness peace agenda for Sinn Fein have become a reality if Jim Lynagh, one of the East Tyrone Brigade’s leaders, not died in that ambush? Lynagh - even though he was a Sinn Fein councillor at the time of his death - did not agree with the political wing’s peace strategy and was planning to form a breakaway dissident terror gang.

Would there have been a Good Friday Agreement if Lynagh had been still alive and an active terrorist in 1998, implementing his Maoist ‘liberated zones’ strategy of murder and mayhem?

On the loyalist side, Billy Wright, the founder of the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force, was ‘conveniently’ murdered inside the Maze prison by INLA inmates. Had Wright lived, would the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire of 1994 survived?

The Coalition must now adopt the same tactics in Afghanistan against the Taliban as the British forces have perfected in Ireland.

In the past 40 years, Sinn Fein has evolved from being an apologist for the Provisional IRA to operating a power-sharing partitionist parliament with the DUP at Stormont.

Given the number of agents operating within the republican movement, the question still remains - how many people needlessly died to implement this strategy?

Focusing back on Afghanistan - how many Taliban leaders either need to be ‘turned’ or eliminated before the country can be classified as a moderate Islamic democracy? Will it take another 40 years as in Ireland’s case? How many people will needlessly die before this strategy can be implemented?

Time is not on the side of the Coalition political leadership. It does not have the luxury of waiting years until agents are firmly in place within influential sections of the Taliban leadership.

What will befall the Afghan people and the Western powers if the Taliban’s versions of Jim Lynagh tighten their grip on the movement and and the nation?

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online

Taliban Tales And Shinner Spin ➖ What’s The Difference?

While recent weeks have witnessed the civil war within the DUP, Political Commentator
Dr John Coulter analyses the Sinn Fein agenda of asking Westminster for assistance.

As the Democratic Unionists continue their surprisingly very public implosion with Stormont Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots’ reign as leader becoming not just the shortest in the party’s 50-year history, but one of the shortest of any political party on the island of Ireland, it seems that Sinn Fein’s Westminster agenda is conveniently slipping under the radar.

At first sight, Unionists have a point that Secretary of State Brandon Lewis agreeing to introduce legislation via Westminster at the behest of Sinn Fein for an Irish Language Act looks like republican blackmail.

Unionists - who want to remain part of the UK - want the Westminster Government to politically ‘butt out’ of what they consider to be devolved matters in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein, on the other hand, which ultimately wants to take Northern Ireland out of the Union, seems to be consistently looking to Westminster to get its Irish Language Act. In short, where would republicans be without the help of the British Government on this issue?

But Sinn Fein’s tactics of using Westminster to politically ‘hoodwink’ Unionism over the culture and language legislation in the middle of a pandemic should come as no surprise.

The British intelligence community’s infiltration of the republican movement has come a very long way since the disastrous internment raids mainly on nationalist areas half a century ago in 1971 when the British security forces acted on clearly outdated information.

In 2021, given the number of agents, informants, touts and spies which British intelligence has secreted within the republican movement, the question could be posed - who is really running that movement?

Indeed, any Unionist who still believes the Provisional IRA has disbanded and the IRA’s ruling Army Council has ‘gone away, you know’ is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Key question - how much of Sinn Fein strategy is being at least influenced, at best dictated by British intelligence’s legion of agents within the republican movement?

Look at how that manipulation has developed since 1971. In the early Seventies, Sinn Fein was nothing more than a social club to remember and commemorate the Irish Volunteers of the failed Dublin Easter Rising of 1916, or indeed, the failed Border campaign of 1956-62.

In spite of the Provos’ so-called ‘long war’ strategy, the British intelligence community quickly learned from its internment debacle and developed its network of agents inside the republican movement.

The British intelligence community’s own ‘long war’ was to use its agents to convince the IRA’s Army Council that terrorism would not work and a political strategy was the only way forward, perhaps to enable the British Foreign Office to achieve its long-term goal, which was to rid England of one of its most expensive final colonies - Northern Ireland.

It must not be forgotten that Arthur Griffith, who founded Sinn Fein in 1905, did not see his fledging movement as a diehard republican outfit. Canadian-style dominion status was the ultimate aim of the original Sinn Fein.

The violent drive in becoming an apologist for terrorism only emerged when British general, Bloody Maxwell, decided to have the 1916 Rising leaders executed by firing squad.

Given that many Dublin Catholics physically spat and verbally abused the Rising participants as they were marched into captivity, the Westminster Government should have ordered Maxwell to simply give them jail terms and tell so-called republicans to ‘grow up’, given that in 1916, many Irish nationalists were fighting for the Empire in the trenches of the Great War.

All the executions served was to turn a bunch of troublesome rebels into global Irish martyrs and propelled Sinn Fein into a Westminster General Election landslide in 1918 when Sinn Fein won over 70 of the 105 Irish Commons seats on offer.

Indeed, was the use of the Black and Tans during the War of Independence the best way to quell the IRA campaign?

While abstentionism has always been at the heart of Sinn Fein’s strategy, that took a dramatic U-turn in 1986 when the movement voted to drop this policy towards the Dail in Dublin and take their seats.

It would be more than a dozen years later when Sinn Fein dropped its abstentionism of Stormont and took its Assembly seats in 1998. Now only the House of Commons boycott remains, given that Sinn Fein takes its seats in every forum to which it has been elected.

Again, given the increasing number of so-called ‘draft dodgers’ emerging as elected representatives at all levels - namely people who have never served an apprenticeship in the Provisional IRA.

In the Republic, suspicion of Sinn Fein remains high among the political establishment, prompting the two main rival parties which have ruled in Leinster House for decades to form an historic pact to keep Sinn Fein out of power.

Indeed, setting aside this pact, the only reason Sinn Fein is not in power following the most recent Dail General Election was simply that the party did not run enough candidates - a mistake the ruling IRA Army Council will not allow the Sinn Fein element of the republican movement to repeat.

Realising this, constitutional Southern nationalist politicians and moderate Northern Unionists have been in talks to see how the Sinn Fein bandwagon can be combated across the entire island. In short, is it possible to create an agreed island without the influence of the ‘Shinners’?

While the DUP indulges in political self-destruction, is the plan of British intelligence to use this legion of agents to get Sinn Fein to evolve into a modern-day version of the now defunct constitutional republican Irish Independence Party, once fronted by a Protestant ex-British Army officer?

If British intelligence can ‘persuade’ Sinn Fein to increasingly rely on the interventions of the Westminster Government, how long before a deal emerges whereby Sinn Fein MPs take their Commons seats like the Scottish and Welsh nationalists?

Irish politics may recently be the art of the crazy and brinkmanship, but it can also be - if past deals between Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness are taken as a benchmark - the art of the impossible. 

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online

Has Sinn Fein Become The Most Pro-British Party In Ireland?

From The Irish Times an argument hat The unregulated use of informers during a conflict runs the risk of human rights abuses 
By Shane Darcy

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in South Africa after the fall of apartheid examined the state’s use of informers, it found that the practice had been widespread over several decades, and that the recruitment of informers had often involved torture and manipulation.

The strategy of using informers served to undermine the regime’s opponents and was “highly effective in creating a climate of suspicion and breaking down trust both within and between families and communities”.

Those suspected of being informers in South Africa often paid a very high price. The commission observed how the practice of “necklacing” was specifically used to punish alleged informers and to deter others: “No act could convey a deeper sense of hatred and disrespect”. ...

... Northern Ireland is a case in point. The use of informers by the British army, the police and security forces was widespread during the Troubles, and the IRA is said to have executed dozens of alleged informers, as well as torturing and sending into exile many suspected “touts”.

Continue reading @ The Irish Times.

Recruited, Rewarded And Reviled: Informers In Times Of Conflict

He had such a stunning overview of the organisation that a whole British intelligence unit was devoted to handling him. His output was so prolific that two handlers and four collators worked full-time on his leads. His source reports were read by ministers. Army careers were built on his informationLiam Clarke 

A Lethal Ally

Daniel Bradley queries the provenance of the Provisional IRA. Daniel Bradley is a Derry justice campaigner. 

One must ask oneself, looking at the outcome of the past in the papers and on the news about informers, especially Scappaticci, if MI5 And MI6 did create the Provisional IRA?

Did MI5 And MI6 Create The Provisional IRA