Stating that “it’s the worst stigma in the world” to be labelled an informer, the young man’s brother sought out the truth behind his sibling’s death.
RTÉ is airing a new documentary on Tuesday night (13 June) in which the brother of a man killed by the IRA after being labelled an informer is interviewed about his 40-year campaign to find out the truth behind his sibling’s death.
20-year-old Michael Kearney was shot and his body was found dumped on a border road in Fermanagh in 1979. His brother Séamus was told he had been killed by the IRA, of which both were members, for informing.
In Brother, Informer, Soldier, Spy, which is airing as part of RTÉ’s Prime Time, Séamus recalls a priest coming to visit him when he was in prison to tell him his brother was dead.
“I say: ‘Is Michael dead?’ He says: ‘Yes, he’s dead’. And I said: ‘All I want to know is was it the British Army or the RUC?’ He says probably the worst news conceivable. He says: ‘It wasn’t the British Army or the RUC. It was the Irish Republican Army,'” Séamus recounts.
“My legs buckled. I hit the chair and everything went into a spin in slow motion.
“It’s a terrible stigma. It’s the worst stigma in the world to have been labelled an informer, especially on the island of Ireland.”
When Séamus was released from prison in 1986, his mother made him promise that he would find out if her son Michael really was an informer.
In the documentary, Séamus details the lengths he went to find the truth, including persuading the IRA to conduct an internal investigation in 2001. In early 2003, he was asked to go to a house in West Belfast where two senior IRA men read out a statement acknowledging Michael was never a spy.
“The army [IRA] read out the report saying he was cleared, he wasn’t an informer,” Séamus tells Prime Time.
Séamus Kearney
“Justice here is to find”
However, though he had cleared his brother’s name, Séamus also learned further details about Michael’s death which led to more questions.
Michael’s murder is one of the cases being looked at by Operation Kenova, a seven-year investigation into the activity of Freddie Scappaticci. The latter has been named in the media as one of the British army’s top agents within the IRA and as being codenamed ‘Stakeknife’. The inquiry is due to publish a detailed report of its findings soon.
Scappaticci spearheaded the IRA’s internal security unit. Known as the ‘nutting squad’, it kidnapped, tortured and executed suspected informers within the IRA.
Before his death earlier this year, Scappaticci always denied being an agent.
Representing the families of 12 victims of the IRA’s internal security department, including the Kearney family, solicitor Kevin Winters tells RTÉ Prime Time:
“Justice here is to find, not only the people who pulled triggers and killed individuals before a court, but significantly – and this is something that sometimes gets overlooked – the people who orchestrated and oversaw this mass process of an informant at the apex of British military intelligence inside the IRA involved in killing people or overseeing the deaths of many, many people.”
Brother, Informer, Soldier, Spy is airing as part of the upcoming edition of Prime Time, which starts at 9.35pm on Tuesday, 13 June on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
You can check out its trailer right here:
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