Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act Ⅲ

Seamus Kearney 🎤 Having established itself within the new IRA structures, the Internal Security Unit ( ISU), gained the trust and confidence of the IRA leadership to the point that it was seen as extremely efficient and beyond suspicion.

The fact that the dead bodies were piling up was seen as proof of the efficiency of the unit.

In September 1981 a carbon copy of the Michael Kearney case was played out when IRA Volunteer Anthony Braniff from the Ardoyne area of North Belfast was arrested by the RUC and interrogated at Castlereagh, East Belfast.

Upon his release he immediately reported back to his unit and submitted his debriefing report, citing what had happened in Castlereagh. A few days later Anthony was approached by his Company Adjutant (ADJ), who was also a Special Branch agent and ordered to attend a second debriefing.

Anthony was unaware that his Adjutant had gone across to the Lower Falls and invited in the Internal Security Unit, specifically telling Freddie Scappaticci that he believed Anthony Braniff was an informer. Scappaticci on this occasion made sure that the earlier mistake he made concerning Michael Kearney and his missing debriefing report would not be repeated, then told the Adjutant to ensure Braniff brought his debriefing report with him and to meet him the next day, Saturday 26th September, at an address at Cullingtree Road, Lower Falls at 10am.

The next day Anthony Braniff left his family home and told his wife, ' I shouldn't be long love'. Little did he know that he was being set up, not by the Internal Security Unit, but by a British agent masquerading as an IRA officer.

When he met Scappaticci his debriefing report was taken from him and he was taken to a safe house in the Beechmount area of West Belfast, told to sit on a chair facing the wall, the chair being wedged between a sofa and the wall.

He was interrogated by members of the ISU, with his Adjutant feeding incorrect information in the next room. The IRA dumps captured and the personnel arrested as a result of the Adjutant were levelled at Anthony Braniff, in particular 'a Brigade dump in Jamaica Road' which Braniff actually knew nothing about.

The shadowy Task Coordinating Group (TCG), first formed in May 1978 and comprised of senior RUC and military personnel - but fully active by March 1979 when their first task was to monitor a major shipment of explosives from the Irish Free State to the Short Strand in East Belfast - was involved in monitoring the Braniff case. It was the TCG that would decide if Anthony Braniff or Michael Kearney etc lived or died, they were the architects of the Dirty War, the IRA leadership being duped into thinking otherwise.

Even though Scappaticci informed his military handler about the whereabouts of Braniff, it was the TCG that decided Braniff should die to scapegoat his treacherous Adjutant. The heat and suspicion had to be taken off the Adjutant.

Within 24 hours of his abduction IRA Volunteer Anthony Braniff was facing the death penalty on trumped up charges. Contrary to customary belief, alleged informers could be executed on the orders at Brigade level, as was the case with Michael Kearney. So too in the case of Anthony Braniff, when Scappaticci and another compromised member of the ISU went to the Belfast Brigade OC for approval to have Braniff executed. The OC merely 'rubber stamped' the death penalty based on the information supplied by Scappaticci and his companion and a false statement prepared.

Meanwhile, Anthony's Adjutant headed back to Ardoyne with the knowledge of his imminent execution, an execution which he knew would scapegoat him and his treacherous actions. When he reported in to his Company OC in Ardoyne and informed him of Anthony's fate, the OC was outraged and blurted out: 'That's rubbish, I need to get over there and sort that out', which rattled his Adjutant who replied: 'No, we'll both go over in the morning', knowing that Braniff was due to be executed that same evening. The Company OC reluctantly agreed.

That same evening, 27th September 1981, IRA Volunteer Anthony Braniff, after being interrogated by British agents masquerading as IRA personnel, was executed with a gunshot wound to the head in an entry off Odessa Street, West Belfast. He was aged 22, married, with 3 young children, Jolene, Anthony and Marylou.

Immediately after his execution a false statement was released from the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, claiming that Anthony was a paid Informer who had compromised a number of IRA dumps in the Ardoyne area.

Significantly, one of the main charges levelled against him was the capture of a Brigade dump in a house in Jamaica Road. Once his Company OC was informed about this he personally went to the house and checked under the floorboards to find the dump still intact and undisturbed. The lie about Anthony Braniff just got bigger.

As a result of an IRA leadership investigation in 2003, IRA Volunteer Anthony Braniff was cleared of any suggestion he had been a paid informer or had compromised IRA war material. His good name was finally restored.

As for his Adjutant, he fled the country by 1990 with the assistance of his Special Branch and MI5 handlers and is still under their protection.

The killing would go on with the Task Coordinating Group at its heart, making life and death decisions on who lived and who died, much like the Roman Emperors watching the gladiatorial combat, with mostly their thumbs in the down position.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.