We're finishing up our live coverage of the Operation Kenova report looking at the role of the IRA spy Stakeknife.

If you want to find out more about Stakeknife then here are a few programmes you can check out.

• The Big Cases: The Executioner Next Door is a one-off documentary by Jennifer O'Leary exploring Freddie Scappaticci's secret life in England. You can find it on BBC iPlayer here.
• Mark Horgan traces the story of the secret British Army Agent known as Stakeknife in a 12-part podcast series for BBC Sounds. You can find it here.

You can read more about what happened today here.

Coverage continues on BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra programme at 17:00 GMT when Richard Morgan will have interviews with Chief Constable Jon Boutcher and the report's author, Sir Iain Livingstone.

This page was edited by Fiona Murray and Conor Neeson and written by Ross McKee, Lucy Carlin, Jamie McColgan, Barry O'Connor, Holly Fleck and Peter Coulter.

The long-awaited report into the activities of an MI5 spy at the heart of the IRA has delivered its final report.

Stakeknife was west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, who died in 2023. He worked in a ruthless IRA unit known as the "nutting squad".

However, he is not identified as Stakeknife in the Operation Kenova report because of the existing government and security policy of not naming agents.

The investigation lasted nine years, cost £40m and runs to 160 pages.

Here is summary of what happened today:

• The report stated MI5 was "closely involved in his handling". The security service had previously claimed its role was "peripheral".
• A military unit known as the 'Rat Hole' was set up solely to assist the management of Stakeknife
• The head of the investigation, Sir Iain Livingstone, called on the government to publicly name Stakeknife "in the public interest."
• The team found evidence that Stakeknife's Army handlers twice flew him out of Northern Ireland on military aircraft for holidays when they knew he was wanted by the police for conspiracy to murder and false imprisonment
• Family members have been speaking out following the publication of the report
• Politicians have also been giving their reaction to the report
• Also today a review included within the report concluded that there is no evidence UK security forces co-operated with the UVF to carry out the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan car bombings

Image source, PA Media

The Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), Micheál Martin, says the report is "a catalogue of tragedy, failure and hurt that affected all communities".

He said it sheds light on the pain and loss to individuals and families and "through the systematic exercise of terror, to communities at large by the Provisional IRA".

"It shows the complicity of British state forces in allowing this to happen when it suited their ends, failing to include individuals and communities in their calculation of the public good," Martin added.

He said he acknowledges with "regret" the absence of the full Denton Report but recognises the summary of it in the wider Kenova report.

The report says the revelation of further MI5 material in April 2024 and its provision to Kenova the following month was the "culmination of several incidents that were capable of being negatively construed as attempts by MI5 to restrict the investigation, run down the clock, avoid any prosecutions relating to Stakeknife and conceal the truth"

It explains that MI5 commissioned retired Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball to conduct a second external review of its approach to Kenova with a specific focus on the circumstances concerning the belated discovery and disclosure of the further material.

She says she has "not seen evidence of a deliberate attempt to withhold material identified in 2024"

"Therefore I have concluded that none of the material was deliberately withheld from Operation Kenova at either an individual or an organisational level," she says.

The report adds: "It is right to note that MI5 found and voluntarily made the further material available in a way that was hardly consistent with a concerted attempt to conceal or cover-up the truth."

Read the full report here, external

Image source, PA Media

Speaking in the House of Commons, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister asked the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, if he would agree that Scappaticci was a "ruthless IRA murderer".

He continued on to ask Benn if he would agree despite the "renegade actions" of "a very tiny number" of members in the RUC and UDR, that they were organisations of "immense integrity" whose service and bravery preserved many lives.

Allister asked if the report "finally lays to rest the republican myth that the security forces were implicated in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings".

Benn responds to say that is what the Kenova report lays out and that he would not comment on the agent called "Stakeknife".

He says he pays tribute to the intelligence forces who kept people safe in the face of murder and mayhem.

SDLP leader Claire Hanna MP welcomes the report and urges the government to urgently review its Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) policy.

"Freddie Scappaticci, the IRA and elements of the security establishment acted as if immune from the law during the Troubles," she says.

"Kenova lays bare the bandit-style operations run by MI5, the FRU and Special Branch, and their disregard for the basic human rights of ordinary citizens."

Hanna adds that the secretary of state must guarantee that "neither NCND nor a national security veto will be used in any future Legacy Commission to shield the reputation of a British government that enabled war criminals in a squalid sectarian conflict".

Alliance leader Naomi Long says the affected families "had to wait for a very long time for truth and justice".

Referring to the fact that the Kenova report did not name Stakeknife, she adds: "I think there is something slightly ludicrous about the situation that there is wild speculation across Northern Ireland about who that individual is and yet they can’t be named in a report.

"That’s something the UK government need to wrestle with."

"Its ludicrous that something can be said in the public domain in the street but it cant be put in a formal report," she adds.

"It makes a mockery of what we are trying to achieve in terms of legacy."

Politicians are starting to react to the report.

Sinn Féin’s North Belfast MP, John Finucane, says the legacy investigations and reviews published as part of the Kenova final report "provide further confirmation of collusion, criminality and cover-up by the British State".

Finucane's father, Pat Finucane, who was a Belfast solicitor, was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1989.

Last year, an independent public inquiry was ordered into the murder.

“Operation Kenova was deliberately undermined by the British state agency MI5," he adds.

"These actions were designed to block the truth."

He says "families striving for truth and justice will be extremely concerned and will raise questions".

“Only a fully independent, Article 2 Human Rights compliant, victim-centred legacy process can command the confidence of families."

Paul Wilson, the son of Thomas Emmanuel Wilson who was killed by the IRA in 1987, says he knew going into the press conference that Stakeknife was not being named, but adds that the “whole point of Kenova was you will get the truth”.

“How can you say we are getting any truth if that key detail is missing?

“There’s always other stuff that is missing because of national security, which you have to sort of accept to a certain degree, but that is a basic, basic thing.

“You can’t investigate the agent known as Stakeknife, spend all of that money and then not find out who he is, that seems a gaping own goal.”

Claire Dignam, whose husband was murdered by the IRA as an informer, previously told the BBC that the British Army tried to recruit her as an informant.

She tells the press conference that she hid "for years because I believe my husband was an informer".

It is believed he was killed because he was suspected of working for the British security services.

She spoke of the fear she lived with and how she was pregnant when he was murdered.

"Now I feel alive and I'm not going to hide again."

Ms Todd says the press conference was taken up largely by the "naming and not naming of Stakeknife."

"This to my mind is a sort of smokescreen," she adds, wanting to know instead "what he did" and "how he was allowed to do it."

"Everyone knows who Scappaticci is.

"Let's get on with finding out how he was allowed to do it."

Daniel De Simone
Investigations correspondent

The report’s stark findings on MI5 today are the latest time in the past two years when the security service has been severely criticised by courts and official inquiries.

In 2023, the public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing – which killed 22 people – concluded that MI5’s senior corporate witness had given inaccurate evidence about the key intelligence it held about the bomber before the attack.

Earlier this year, MI5 was forced to apologise after the BBC revealed it gave false evidence to three courts about a neo-Nazi state agent. MI5 then tried to withhold further damning material from the high court, and its third-in-command gave an inaccurate account of what had happened to senior judges, leading to the prime minister ordering a new investigation.

Jon Boutcher, PSNI chief constable, says he thinks that MI5 has an issue with its approach to legacy cases in Northern Ireland and that things must change.

But there is also wider question about whether MI5 can be trusted to provide truthful evidence to courts and investigations.

This poses a profound challenge to the government, which acts for MI5 in the courts and relies on its intelligence assessments.

There are calls for MI5 to be subjected to increased scrutiny and be held more accountable under the law. How will ministers react?

Moira Todd is also at the news conference. Her brother is Eugene Simons, one of the Disappeared.

The 26-year-old went missing from his home near Castlewellan, County Down, on 1 January 1981.

His body was discovered by chance in May 1984 in a bog near Dundalk, County Louth.

A state apology "certainly wouldn't help", she tells reporters.

Ms Todd says she wants the "truth".

"Forty-five years on I am sitting here none the wiser and all I am hearing is about the truth being suppressed and the government avoiding accountability."

She adds that it is "frustrating".

Kevin Winters of KRW Law, who represents the families of some victims in relation to Operation Kenova, talks about the "role of MI5 arising from today's report".

He says that as part of the report, "we learn that an MI5 operative broke into a locker belonging to two Kenova personnel in Thames House".

"What does that say about the integrity of the process?

"It harks back to the fires started at the offices of the Stevens inquiry, when in the 1990s, Sir John Stevens and his team started investigating loyalist state collusion into the killing of Pat Finucane and many others."

He also calls for a public inquiry into the activities of Stakeknife, adding: "Otherwise it will all have been in vain."

At a press conference, Kevin Winters from KRW Law says: "I can cut to the chase now and formally announce that Fred Scappaticci was the agent Stakeknife".

The Operation Kenova report does not confirm the identity of the agent known as Stakeknife, as the UK government will not presently allow it.

In the report's preface, Sir Iain states he should be named "in the public interest".

Stakeknife has never been publicly named by UK authorities, but in 2003 he was identified by the media as Freddie Scappaticci.

It is believed the west Belfast man was a member of the Provisional IRA who later became a spy for the Army.

Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, thanks Hilary Benn and asks him multiple questions in the Commons following the findings.

The DUP leader asks if Benn welcomes the findings of Kenova "that there was no high-level state collusion" between loyalist paramilitaries and members of the Army or the security forces.

He further asks if Benn realises "the absurdity of maintaining the position that Operation Kenova could not name" Stakeknife?