Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan is about to complete a report into allegations that a former north Belfast UVF commander was involved in more than a dozen murders while he acted as an informer for the RUC Special Branch, The Irish Times has learned Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, reports.
Former senior RUC officer Johnston Brown has claimed to this newspaper that elements within RUC Special Branch protected this UVF figure to ensure he was not exposed as an informant, despite the fact that they knew he was associated with several killings of Protestants and Catholics.
"It is perverse what happened, and goes against everything a police officer is sworn to do," Mr Brown said yesterday.
The Irish Times has also obtained a confidential report compiled by the respected London-based human rights group British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW) which lists nine of the people whom the UVF man is alleged to have murdered either through direct involvement or indirectly by ordering or being linked to these killings.
Raymond McCord, whose son Raymond jnr was allegedly murdered on the orders of this UVF figure in 1997, has also told The Irish Times that security and loyalist paramilitary sources have corroborated to him the claims made by Mr Brown, who as a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer was responsible for putting UDA leader Johnny Adair in prison for directing terrorism.
Mr McCord snr raised his concerns about the investigation into his son's death when he met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin recently.
Sources say the Ombudsman's report, which will be completed in the summer, will be more controversial and far-reaching than her report into how the RUC handled the inquiry into the Real IRA bombing of Omagh. That exposed huge failings in the RUC inquiry and had major security and political implications.
Last year in the Dáil Labour leader Pat Rabbitte named the alleged UVF killer and victims. The Irish Times is not identifying the UVF man to avoid any suggestion he may be endangered or that a trial he is facing on another serious charge could be prejudiced.
The Ombudsman's investigation, which has been running for over two years, is the biggest conducted by Mrs O'Loan, involving more personnel, time and resources even than the Omagh inquiry. The critical element of her work is whether members of Special Branch colluded with the alleged UVF killer, or whether he was allowed continue as an informant through negligence or oversight. Her inquiry began as an examination of how police handled the investigation into the suspected UVF murder of Mr McCord in November 1997.
But the wider allegations of possible collusion by members of RUC Special Branch and the claim that the UVF figure was involved in multiple murders while an informant became so serious that its remit was broadly extended.
The Ombudsman's office would only confirm that Mrs O'Loan's preliminary findings had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions in the North, Sir Alasdair Fraser, and her final report will be published in the summer.
The BIRW has become so alarmed by the scale of the allegations that it has compiled its own report on the killings, which it has sent to the Ombudsman, the Independent Monitoring Commission, Northern Secretary Peter Hain, US peace process special envoy Dr Mitchell Reiss, and the US Congress.
The killing period runs from January 17th, 1993, to October 31st, 2000. Mr Brown said the UVF man was a Special Branch agent over that period.
The BIRW said that if Mrs O'Loan substantiates the allegations, an independent inquiry must be held.