along with others, to go the house. i had no idea that his name was sandy lynch at this time. we were just told to go to a house and babysit a guy who was an informer. when we went through the door, there was men coming down the stairs. sean maguire, freddie scappaticci. maguire, i bumped into him right at the bottom of the stairs and he looked up at the room where sandy was and he went like that, you know, which to me was sort of saying he should be shot there, you know? but sandy lynch survived. police raided the house, arresting gerard hodgins and others. those who d already left included sean maguire and freddie scappaticci. scappaticci had, however, left something behind fingerprints on the battery of an anti bugging device. a police fingerprint expert said he was certain that the imprint
in later years, i ve come to the view that that s perhaps what the internal security unit s real raison d etre was, the real purpose was to protect the army council. the british wanted that army council post 1983 in place because they knew that the army council were assets, and i differentiate between assets and agents here, that they were assets in as far as they were going to deliver a solution. former ira prisoner gerard hodgins knew scappaticci to be part of the ira s security unit. i would have first bumped into freddie scappaticci from about 1986 onwards when i was initially working with sinn fein in west belfast and then the republican press centre, as well as my other duties. he s just somebody i knew from the ira and i would just be somebody he would know from the ira. in west belfast, he frequently
that he shouldn t prosecute. so, while my initial concern was in respect of the deception of the director of public prosecutions, it escalated into a concern in respect of the potential covering up of up to 20 plus murders. and that s what ultimately led to kenova. the convictions of eight people, including gerard hodgins, had already been quashed. but the contents of the file which was withheld all those years ago has never been made public. what was kept secret has remained secret. to this day, we still don t know what s contained within that. it may well contain reference to fred scappaticci and/or others. we don t know. what s also unknown is if other criminal cases were prosecuted where