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Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein expelled a senior member after he admitted he had been spying for Britain for two decades.
Denis Donaldson was cleared last week of spying for Sinn Fein, which seeks to end British rule in Northern Ireland. In fact, he said, he had been a British agent for 20 years.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern called it a “bizarre twist”.
«« click pic for Scotsman article
Denis Donaldson, centre, with Martin McGuinness
and Gerry Adams last week. Picture: Paul Faith/ PA
“I was a British agent at the time,” Donaldson, formerly Sinn Fein’s head of administration at the mothballed Stormont Assembly in British-ruled Northern Ireland, told Irish state broadcaster RTE.
“I was recruited in the 1980s after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life. Since that time, Donaldson said, he had worked for British intelligence and Northern Irish police. Over that period, I was paid money,” he said.
Donaldson said he deeply regretted his activities and apologised to his family and the Republican movement. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams told reporters at a news conference in Dublin that Donaldson had approached the party after police informed him his cover was about to be blown and his life was in danger.
The British government declined to comment on the revelations.
More on British covert operations below the fold »»
«« click pic for BBC article IRA A man walks past a mural in Ballymurphy, northern Ireland. Sinn Fein has expelled a senior party member, alleging that he was a spy for Britain, the IRA political ally said. REUTERS/Jeff J Mitchell
The Stormont assembly, in which Catholic Nationalist and Protestant Loyalist parties on either side of the Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide shared power, collapsed three years ago after a police raid on Sinn Fein offices.
Donaldson, along with two others, was later arrested and charged with having documents likely to be of use to terrorists. But the Director of Public Prosecutions decided last week it was no longer in the public interest to pursue the case.
“If what we’re hearing now, that one of Sinn Fein’s top administrators in Stormont turns out to be a British spy, this is as bizarre as it gets,” Ahern said.
Adams said it was too soon to say what the consequences would be in terms of kick-starting stalled talks on restoring a power-sharing government set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but repeated his commitment to the process.
He accused elements within the British intelligence services of trying to undermine the Good Friday Agreement as they were unhappy at changes that have largely ended 30 years of violence between Irish republican and pro-British paramilitaries.
“Those who ran those agencies … they hate republicans with a passion,” said Adams who has repeatedly denied the existence of a Sinn Fein spy ring at Stormont.
“For them the war isn’t over, for them Good Friday (Agreement) was a huge mistake.”
In his statement to RTE, Donaldson said the spy ring was “a scam and a fiction” created by security forces.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
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