What is the Stakeknife scandal, and what happens next?

Freddie Scappaticci denies being IRA spy ‘Stakeknife’.Photograph: REX/Shutterstock What is the Stakeknife scandal?The agent code named “Stakeknife” was one of British military intelligence’s most valued assets, operating inside the Provisional IRA. Recruited in the late 1970s, the spy rose through the IRA’s ranks in Belfast to become head of the paramilitary group’s informer-hunting unit known as “the nutting squad”. He had the power of life