BRITAINS TOP IRA MOLE IN HIDING

A man said to be the top British spy working from inside the IRA has been named by at least four newspapers in the UK and Ireland.

The alleged mole, codenamed Stakeknife is now reported to be in hiding after his identity was exposed in the papers and on websites.

As the Government's most powerful weapon in its 30-year "Dirty War" against republicans, he is suspected of being allowed to get away with up to 40 murders by a shadowy Army intelligence unit, it is claimed.

With Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens now examining the agent as part of his inquiry into alleged security force collusion with loyalist killers in Northern Ireland, speculation about his identity has reached fever pitch in Belfast.

But the Glasgow-based Sunday Herald, the Sunday Tribune in Dublin and editions of the Sunday People and Sunday World on both sides of the Irish border have all named a man they claim to be Army's most valued informer on IRA operations.

A Northern Ireland Office spokeswoman refused last night to discuss the disclosure.

"We wouldn't comment on anything of an intelligence or security nature," she said.

Stakeknife has lived at addresses both in Belfast and Dublin - but the People reported him to be at a safe house in England.

The top spy was in charge of the IRA's so-called Nutting Squad - which was tasked with tracing down informers - and head of the Northern Command security for almost two decades, it was claimed.

He is said to have been involved in the killings of loyalists, policemen, soldiers, and civilians to protect his cover so he could keep passing vital intelligence.

He also kidnapped, interrogated, tortured and killed other IRA men suspected of being British informers.

The claims emerge just weeks after Sir John published his devastating findings of collusion between police and soldiers and loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland.

Up to 20 members of the security forces, both serving and retired, may face criminal prosecutions as a result of his report.

The man named as Stakeknife was reported to have been a low-level informant in the IRA's west Belfast brigade before being subjected to a punishment beating by the terrorist grouping during the late 1970s.

Distrustful of the police, he offered his services to the British Army before he rose through the ranks of the Provisional movement.

As Nutting Squad chief he vetted every IRA volunteer recruited into the organisation for nearly 20 years, it was claimed.

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y did the papers give out this guys name? anyways i really wouldn't like to be him just now because everyone involved will now know who he is and what he's been upto and the IRA don't give up looking for people who've done stuff like this until they're dead.

may be years away but one day he's going to answer the door to the wrong people.