REPUBLICAN racketeers have produced pirate copies of movies about Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker, and Martin McGartland, the former RUC agent, weeks before they are due to be released in cinemas. They are now being sold in nationalist areas of Belfast.

The copies, which are of near perfect quality, bear the tagline, Another Fine Release by Curly J, the counterfeiter’s nickname. They are being sold for €6 each in shops, from the back of vans, and by children earning commission.

“These guys have all the new releases before they get into the cinemas,” said a source who bought copies of both films last week and presented them to The Sunday Times. “If they don’t have it they will order it and get it in a few days. Most of the people running it are IRA or ex-IRA. The same people sell you smuggled cigarettes.”

One of the pirated movies, Fifty Dead Men Walking, tells the story of McGartland, who is from west Belfast, and who infiltrated the IRA between 1987 and 1991, when his cover was blown. The IRA have twice tried to kill him, once in Twinbrook when he escaped an interrogation gang by jumping out a third-storey window, and later in the north of England where he was tracked down and shot while living under a new identity.

“From my time in the IRA I know that they have been involved in piracy for years,” said McGartland, who is played by Jim Sturgess in the movie. “They will do anything for money. I do think it’s ironic that IRA men, who called me ‘the scum of the earth’ for taking money off the British, are now cashing in on my life story.

“These filmmakers got too close to the IRA when they were making the movie and this is the thanks they get.”

Kari Skogland, the film’s director, has said she worked closely with former IRA prisoners to ensure the authenticity of the movie, and that they also provided security.

The other pirated film is Steve McQueen’s Hunger, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and is scheduled for release in cinemas at the end of the month. It dramatises life inside the Maze prison and the events surrounding the 1981 IRA hunger strike. McQueen spoke to ex-prisoners and prison officers for his research.

Given that the film has been criticised by some as being the celebration of the martyrdom of a dead terrorist, it is ironic that its take at the Belfast box-office will be damaged by republican racketeers.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game