BRITAIN’S role in a secret “dirty war” against the IRA could lead to the prosecution of several senior army and police figures at the heart of covert operations.

The Times has learnt that Sir John Stevens’s report on Northern Ireland will confirm Republican suspicions about the way that the police and Army operated in the Province for almost two decades.

An Army section called the Force Research Unit is implicated in the murder of Patrick Finucane, a solicitor who represented suspected terrorists but whom Sir John believes was not a member of the IRA. The unit is also accused of colluding with loyalist paramilitaries to target suspected IRA terrorists for assassination.

And two thirds of the 100 people arrested for questioning during the 14-year investigation were working as agents for MI5, the Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The summary of the 3,000-page finding by Sir John, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, will fuel nationalist demands for a full judicial investigation.

Hardline Ulster Unionists gave warning that the results could be used by Sinn Fein to secure more concessions from the Government at a crucial stage in the future of the Good Friday Agreement.

In Belfast today, Sir John will outline the findings and recommendations of his investigation into collusion by the security forces in murder in Northern Ireland during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

It is expected to portray deep suspicion and rivalry between different arms of the British security forces and the former Royal Ulster Constabulary. All were keen to protect their networks of paid informants. The result was a breakdown in overall control which led to “rogue” operations being carried out against the IRA.

“If you actually have a situation whereby people are encourged to shoot other people, and that is assisted by part of the security service, is that going to lead to peace or is that going to ratchet up the violence?” a source close to the inquiry said. “Don’t forget the violence over there. If one life is lost on one side they are going to take a life from the other side”

The full report will remain confidential because Sir John is prevented from disclosing the extent of the infiltration of the IRA and Ulster Defence Association by the security forces. To do so would damage state security and be prejudical to future criminal trials.

Files on 23 people are to be sent to Sir Alisdair Fraser, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, to see if criminal charges can be brought against them.

The source believes that there is evidence to bring prosecutions against up to seven of the 23 for the part they allegedly played in the secret war against the IRA.

The key figure identified in the report is Brigadier Gordon Kerr, now the military attaché in Beijing, who ran the FRU that can be linked to a number of deaths. The report, which will be sent to Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, does not lay specific charges against Brigadier Kerr.

Sir Alisdair will have to decide whether there is a more than 50 per cent chance of securing a conviction against anyone and whether a prosecution would be in the public interest.

Sir John’s investigation, the biggest criminal inquiry in British history, will be deeply embarrassing to the security forces. His office was burnt down in an arson attack that the source says was carried out by “rogue elements of the security forces”.

His work is not complete as he is planning to interview an informant known as Stakeknife, who has been a senior figure in the IRA since the 1970s. The informant is to be questioned over his role in a series of paramilitary killings.

The inquiry also discovered that terrorists escaped being brought to trial because different parts of the security forces would not share information with RUC detectives.

It found that the FRU passed information identifying alleged terrorists to loyalist gunmen principally through Brian Nelson, an agent controlled by the FRU who infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association. Mr Nelson, a key informant who was given a new identity, died last week.

“Nelson was personally given intelligence packages to give to psychopaths to go out and shoot people. His intelligence was honed up by the Army who took some of his stuff back to make it more effective. They even gave him a computer", the source said. Nelson was credited with saving only two lives, one of whom was Gerry Adams.

Mark Durkan, leader of the Social, Democratic and Labour Party, said: "Whatever the contents of the Stevens report, the requirement of a public independent international judicial inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane remains urgent and compelling. If the Stevens report has a value, it will be to confirm and advance the ongoing work of the policing board in the dismantling of the Special Branch and the creation of accountable and acceptable intelligence gathering."

However, Mr Finucane’s widow, Geraldine, described the inquiry as a "smokescreen" to prevent a public inquiry being held. Mrs Finucane, who has refused to be interviewed by Sir John’s team, told The Times: "We don’t think that anything was wrong with the system: it was working perfectly for what the Government wanted. They were using the loyalists to get the results they wanted."

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