Rogue police officers turned a blind eye to a decade of murders carried out by loyalist paramilitary informers in Northern Ireland, a damning report is to reveal on Monday.
The scale of the collusion between Special Branch handlers and an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang based in north Belfast lays bare the murky world of Ulster's intelligence war, with multiple killings linked to the massive probe by Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan.
Senior RUC officers are understood to have been implicated in the biggest-ever policing scandal to hit Northern Ireland. With the Government braced for an uproar over how a state agency allowed a terrorist unit to kill Catholics and Protestants, files have been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider possible criminal charges.
Mrs O'Loan, who uncovered devastating evidence during a three-year investigation, has sent a confidential dossier, naming Special Branch and CID officers as well as the UVF agents they ran, to the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain and Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde.
Her inquiry, which began with the beating to death of ex-RAF man Raymond McCord Junior, 22, in November 1997, has been widened out to examine a catalogue of killings.
The figure involved stretches into double figures, according to those who have seen the report.
The Ombudsman's probe has stretched back to the murder of Catholic taxi driver Sharon McKenna, 27, in January 1993. But her staff have also compiled high-grade intelligence on a series of other victims, including the shooting in 2000 of loyalist Tommy English during a paramilitary feud, and Presbyterian Church Minister David Templeton, who died after being beaten at his home in 1997.
Details on each of the murders linked to the gang will be included in the published report, thought to run to 100 pages but which will not identify either him, any other UVF agents or their handlers.
It will also include a series of recommendations on the handling of agents in an attempt to strengthen public confidence.
Raymond McCord Senior, whose original complaint triggered the Ombudsman's inquiry, described the outcome as another step towards justice for his son. The north Belfast man, who has defied UVF death threats throughout his campaign, said: "It vindicates what I have said all along."
