“Brian Nelson, who has died of a brain haemorrhage aged 55, features in today’s report by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens. In the early 1990s, Stevens, then a relatively lowly deputy chief constable in Cambridgeshire, was asked to conduct an inquiry into the relationship between the British army and Protestant paramilitaries, notably the Ulster Defence Association.”
“He soon came across Nelson, a fanatical and sectarian Protestant from Belfast’s Shankill Road, who was recruited in 1985 by British military intelligence to act as an army agent in the UDA, which he had joined a decade earlier.”
“He performed his delicate and dangerous new task with great enthusiasm. His house and car, plus £200 a week expenses, were paid for by the British army (the British taxpayer). In 1987, soon after his recruitment, Nelson went to South Africa to shop for arms for the UDA and supervised the shipment of two huge batches of arms, at least one of which ended up in the hands of the paramilitaries.”
“When Stevens discovered the role of Nelson in paramilitary sectarian murders, he insisted on Nelson’s prosecution, and he was arrested.”
“This caused dismay in the British army and its undercover organisation, the Force Research Unit (FRU). Stevens was adamant that he could not condone Nelson’s behaviour, and frantic negotiations followed.”
“A deal was finally clinched in January 1992. Nelson agreed to plead guilty to five conspiracies to murder, and at least four sectarian murder charges against him were dropped. In a bizarre court case lasting less than a day, Nelson’s real role was effectively covered up. After a moving tribute to his sterling work for the British army from a then anonymous colonel, Nelson got 10 years.”
“Speaking from behind a security screen, and brushing aside Nelson’s record as an accomplice to murder, the colonel stressed the lives Nelson had allegedly “saved”. Nelson was released after serving less than half his sentence, and spent the rest of his life under a false identity.”
Read more: Brian Nelson
2021-week29
