The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, has continued to upbraid the media over allegations that the British double agent "Stakeknife" is senior west Belfast republican Mr Freddie Scappaticci, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Mr Adams said in Belfast yesterday that Mr Scappaticci must be treated as innocent until proven guilty. He had to accept Mr Scappaticci's denials. "I know that people should be judged as innocent until proven guilty and I'm not going to say anything more to add to the endless speculation around all of this," he added.
While republicans at different levels within Sinn Féin and the IRA complain that many questions remain unanswered over the claims, Mr Adams instead rebuked the media for its coverage of the issue. In the Ulster Hall on Thursday night he said it was the media rather than Sinn Féin or the IRA who were being damaged in the fallout from the "Stakeknife" claims.
He said: "The losers were the media folks, because in an unquestioning way they took a line from faceless people who have given us killings on Bloody Sunday in Derry, on New Lodge Road in Belfast, in Ballymurphy, in Springhill - this weekend marks the anniversary of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings - who have actively manipulated, armed and directed unionist paramilitaries over the decades to kill republicans, to kill nationalists, and when they could not kill us, kill whatever nationalist got in the way." He returned to that theme when questioned about "Stakeknife" yesterday. He complained about some journalists reporting assertions as fact, "without any objectivity at all, without question at all".
"So there is a big job of work to be done by the media, in my view, to redeem yourselves, and if I may say so in terms of objective reporting of all of this, because if anybody was used in the last month or so, you are the people who were used," he added.
Mr Adams appeared to suggest that some form of anti-republican conspiracy was behind the allegations. Asked did he accept Mr Scappaticci's insistence that he was not an informer he said: "I have to accept that but I'm not going to get into a whole pile of speculation. The big question, you see, is: Who and what agenda is being served by all of this and how does it fit into the current political vacuum?"
Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Mr Martin McGuinness earlier in the week complained about the reports being supplied by "nameless securocrats". Asked about Mr Scappaticci's denial of the claims against him, Mr McGuinness said: "I can't disbelieve his denial." However, the "Stakeknife" claims continue to cause disquiet in republican heartlands.