Covert Operations

COVERT MILITARY OPERATIONS: British Agents Nelson and Holroyd

The Brian Nelson case reveals the extent to which the British government is prepared to use covert operations and 'counter gangs' in order to advance its political objectives in Ireland.

Brian Nelson, a native of Belfast, was a British soldier and was active in the Ulster Defense Association's MURDER SQUADS in the 1970s. He was jailed with two other UDA operatives for the kidnapping and torture killing by electrocution of a nearly blind Catholic man.

Nelson rejoined the UDA as a British Intelligence agent in the 1980s, working closely with his MI5 handlers. He became UDA Director of Intelligence and was responsible for selecting Catholic/nationalist targets for the UDA's murder squads and organizing arms shipments -- with the full backing and knowledge of British Intelligence until his arrest in 1990.

On 3 February 1992, a senior British judge, Basil Kelly, handed down a minimum prison sentence to Nelson describing him as a man who had shown "the greatest of courage."

Nearly 200 innocent Nationalists have been murdered by Loyalist Murder Gangs since 1988 when Nelson traded for high powered arms, fragmentary grenades and other modern weapons from South Africa for missile system secrets and hundreds of detailed 'security forces' files on nationalists found their way into the hands of the loyalists .

Background

On 3 February 1992, a senior judge and former Attorney General for the unionist government at Stormont, Basil Kelly, handed down a minimum prison sentence to a British agent, Brian Nelson. Justice Kelly praised Nelson and described him as a man who had shown "the greatest of courage". The Director of Public Prosecutions [DPP] also received a letter sent on behalf of British cabinet minister, Tom King, in support of Nelson and saying that he was a valuable agent.

The sentencing of Nelson to ten years imprisonment on a series of charges relating to killings in the Six Counties was the result of a deal struck between the office of then British Attorney General, Patrick Mayhew, Nelson himself and the North's judiciary. The deal was to keep Nelson from disclosing embarrassing information about British Intelligence and its deep involvement with loyalist death squads. Fifteen of the 35 charges against Nelson, including two charges of murder, were dropped by the Crown Prosecution at an earlier court appearance in return for guilty pleas on 20 lesser charges, five of which related to conspiracy to murder. Brian Nelson has since been transferred to a prison in England and is expected to be released in three or four years time.

Who Is Brian Nelson?

Nelson is a 45-year-old native of Belfast, who once served with the notorious Black Watch Regiment of the British army. He joined the Ulster Defense Association [UDA] in the 1970s and was later recruited by British Military Intelligence. He worked undercover for British Intelligence in Ireland from within the ranks of the UDA.

In 1973, he and two UDA members kidnapped a half-blind Catholic man. The victim, Gerald Higgins, was abducted as he was walking along North Queen Street in the North Belfast area. Nelson and the other two electrocuted him and burned his hair off. The RUC labeled Nelson the ringleader of the gang and in a subsequent court report the Belfast News Letter said:

"The abducted man was taken to a UDA club in Wilton Street off the Shankill Road, searched, punched, had a gun drawn across his head and had his hair set alight.

"Mr. Higgins had his spectacles taken away from him, leaving him almost blind. The injured man had a heart condition and his assailants refused to let him take pills which gave him relief. The men wet his hands and then put two wires in his hands connected to a generator and sent an electric shock through his body. In a notebook belonging to Mr. Higgins were the words: This is one, two to follow'."

Gerald Higgins was dead not long afterwards of the effects on his torturous ordeal.

Nelson and his two UDA accomplices were not even charged with attempted murder. They pleaded guilty to charges of false imprisonment of Gerald Higgins and possession of a revolver. Nelson was sentenced to only seven years in jail.

On his release from prison, Nelson, still working for British Intelligence, became active again in the UDA until the mid 1980s when he left Ireland to work in Germany. While in Germany Nelson maintained contact with the UDA and his British Army handlers.

In early 1987, his former British Army 'handler' and a representative of MI5 met Nelson outside London and asked him to return to Belfast to resume his role as a British agent within the UDA. The UDA, at that time a legal organization, is the largest loyalist paramilitary force with responsibility for the killings of hundreds of nationalist/Catholic civilians. Nelson became Director of Intelligence for the UDA. He was in control of selecting targets for loyalist death squads. He was actively assisted in this by his British intelligence 'handlers' who directed the reorganization and the rearming of the UDA.

From the time he returned to Ireland until his arrest:

Nelson was assisted by British Intelligence in compiling information on people who would be targeted for assassination;
The British Intelligence/Nelson combination was directly responsible for murders and attempted murders; British Intelligence allowed Nelson to organize a huge arms shipment from South Africa, to come into the Six Counties to be used against the nationalist population;
The Nelson/British Intelligence ring was responsible for the shooting dead of solicitor Patrick Finucane and for the targeting of fellow solicitor, Paddy McCrory, the man who faced the SAS at the Gibraltar inquest;
A British Intelligence officer suggested that the UDA should bomb the huge Whitegate Oil Refinery in Cork Harbor.

Nelson was arrested in January 1990 as part of investigations into the widespread leakage of British Intelligence documents to loyalist murder squads. This investigation, headed by senior British police officer, John Stevens, followed increasing public concern about collusion between British Crown Forces and loyalist paramilitaries. It later emerged that Nelson's British Intelligence handlers impeded the Stevens Inquiry by delaying for months the handover of 1,000 Crown Forces photo montages which Nelson had in his possession as the UDA's Director of Intelligence.

In mid-January 1993, British Secretary of State for the North, Patrick Mayhew, denied that weapons imported by Brian Nelson with the knowledge of British Intelligence, are being used to kill Catholics. This is untrue. Mr. Mayhew's denial came in the midst of a sustained loyalist killing campaign.

The modern weapons used in recent killings, including the Milltown cemetery attack, the Ormeau and Oldpark bookmakers' shop attacks, and individual killings, came from the consignment brought in by Nelson with the assistance of British Intelligence.

British Intelligence and the British government were kept fully informed of all Nelson's activities including a weapons shipment which came in in January 1988 and included 200 AK47 rifles; 90 Browning pistols; around 500 fragmentation grenades; 30,000 rounds of ammunition and a dozen RPG7 rocket launchers.

At Nelson's trial a 'character witness', a Military Intelligence Colonel referred to as 'J', stated that he was the commander of a Military Intelligence Unit in 'the North between 1986 and 1989 and had been responsible for Nelson.

Colonel 'J' admitted that he gave monthly briefings to the British army GOC in the North and other senior officers. He said that it "would be normal for Nelson's information to be referred to at these briefings. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland might also be interested in such information."

Evidence given in court and uncovered by journalists has revealed the extent of the import of these weapons and that Colonel 'J' knew of these events.

Brian Nelson's case reveals the extent to which the British government is prepared to use covert operations and 'counter gangs' in order to advance its political objectives in Ireland.

South African Connections

Informal contacts between loyalists and South Africa were first established in the mid 1970s when some former Ulster Defense Regiment [UDR] men went there as mercenaries. By 1989, however, the situation had changed considerably: "the Pretoria link with the Ulsterman has been developed over some considerable time and was (sic) a well established two-way traffic".

The starting point for this new relationship was the visit to Belfast in 1985 of a 48-year-old ex-merchant seaman originally from Portadown, Ireland who went to live in South Africa. Dick Wright's Ulster connections made him a useful intermediary -- he was the uncle of Alan Wright, leader of the Ulster Clubs and co-founder of Ulster Resistance. He was also an agent for Armscor, the South African state-owned company which, in defiance of the 1977 United Nations arms embargo, set about making South Africa self-sufficient in military hardware.

Within a decade it had made the country one of the world's top ten arms exporters. It was particularly anxious to acquire a missile system for use in Angola and Namibia. Israel (which had given South Africa its start in the arms business, supplying designs for ships, missiles and small arms) was equally keen to get details of the most advanced missile available -- the Starstreak being developed by Shorts in Belfast.

Wright visited the home in East Belfast of a senior UDA leader and offered to supply guns; the order would have to be worth at least a quarter of a million pounds, missile parts or plans would be an acceptable alternative to cash.

The offer was taken seriously by the UDA. John McMichael sent UDA intelligence officer Brian Nelson to South Africa to investigate the possibility of a deal. The crowds traveling from Belfast to London over weekend of 7 & 8 June 1985 for the McGuigan/Pedroza boxing match provided cover for the part of Nelson's journey.

During the two weeks in South Africa, Nelson was shown warehouses full of weapons by Dick Wright, the Armscor agent representing the South African state. The conditions of the deal offered by his host became decidedly more attractive: the loyalists were to supply South African agents with secrets or parts -- if possible a complete Shorts missile system -- in return for a substantial shipment of arms and finance of up to £1 million.

A British Agent Inside the Murder Squads for 10 Years

By 1985, Brian Nelson had been a British agent for least ten years. Official knowledge of the South African negotiations however may have gone far beyond the reports of Nelson on his return. Private Eye claimed in February 1992 that Nelson's visit had been cleared not only by the Minister of Defense but by an unnamed government minister.

The DPP's deal with Nelson at his trial was intended to ensure that no mention would be made of either the South African visit or the British government minister. (In 1987, a US State Department report named Britain as one of the countries which had violated the UN arms embargo against South Africa.)

In June 1987, the robbing of the Northern Bank in Portadown provided the money for the deal to go ahead -- £150,000 of the £300,000 taken in the raid was spent on South African arms. This bought more weaponry than the UDA could handle, so the Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF] and Ulster Resistance were made 'partners' in the enterprise. A top secret unit responsible for developing channels of communication on behalf of several loyalist paramilitary groups were set up. Roy Metcalfe, a member of the unit, represented Ulster Resistance in the negotiations. When he and Thomas Gibson were executed by the IRA in October 1989, Ulster Resistance claimed that they had been 'set up' by British Intelligence.

The deal was completed and final arrangements were made in December 1987. Military Intelligence had been informed by Brian Nelson of developments at every stage of the proceedings; he passed on all the details including the method to be used to smuggle in the weapons. No action was taken.

At the end of December 1987 Joseph Fawzi, a Lebanese intermediary employed by a US arms dealer working for the South Africans, dispatched a huge consignment of arms which landed without difficulty in January 1988 somewhere along the County Down coast. Two hundred AK47 automatic rifles, 90 Browning pistols, around 500 fragmentation grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition and a dozen RPG7 rocket launchers disappeared without trace, the haul having apparently been divided into 3 parts shortly after its arrival.

If discovered, the arms would not have revealed their true origin; many were Czech-made weapons initially used by the PLO in Lebanon where they had been captured by the Israelis and sold to Armscor. The shipment had not been let in through negligence, mistake or oversight. The decision to allow it to go ahead had been taken (presumably at the highest levels) months before. Nelson states in a prison journal:

"In 1987 I was discussing with my handler Ronnie the South African operation when he told me that because of the deep suspicion the seizure would have aroused, to protect me it had been decided to let the first shipment into the country untouched."

Nelson's involvement in setting up the UDA's transport system meant he, and therefore British intelligence, knew the location of the farmhouse where the weapons would be stored initially after landing.

In January 1988, Davy Payne, an ex-British paratrooper and a UDA Brigadier was arrested outside Portadown as he transported 60 assault rifles, rockets and handguns -- most of the UDA's portion of the shipment. At the time the arrest was attributed to good luck and keen observation. Payne's arrest drew attention to Ulster Resistance -- a telephone number written on Payne's hand turned out to be that of Noel Lyttle, a civil servant, former member of the UDR and close associate of Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson [top leadership of the DUP]. Lyttle had stood for the Democratic Unionist Party [DUP] as a candidate in local government elections.

Lyttle was warned on two or three occasions that he was under surveillance by the crown forces. Even his questioning and release without charge did not interrupt Ulster Resistance's attempts to renegotiate with the South Africans.

Hightech Missiles for Murder Arms

The Starstreak, being developed under a £225 million Ministry of Defense contract at Shorts was what the South Africans wanted. A fully operational unit had been on display until a few hours before a raid in 1987 in which Ulster Resistance had stolen a Javelin aiming unit. The extraordinary coincidence did not raise any suspicions: Lyttle's questioning and the warnings were ignored and three Ulster Resistance members traveled to Paris to negotiate with the South Africans, who had already made a down payment of £50,000.

They were offering not only the parts (which though not operational could be used for research purposes) but expertise in firing the weapons -- one of the three, Samuel Quinn, was a senior NCO in the Ulster Air Defense Regiment of the Territorial Army. Quinn trained recruits in the use of the Blowpipe missile. One of the weapons offered to the South Africans was a dummy Blowpipe, stolen from Newtownards, where Quinn served. In April 1989, the three -- Noel Lyttle, Samuel Quinn and James King were arrested in Paris along with arms dealer Douglas Bernhardt and a South African diplomat, Daniel Storm.

Storm claimed diplomatic immunity and was expelled from France. A diplomatic row blew up -- but there was more noise than genuine surprise on the part of the British authorities, who were well aware of Bernhardt's activities. A naturalized American citizen, born in South Africa and married to an Englishwoman, he had operated a gun dealership Field Arms in Mayfair for three years -- it had received assistance from the Department of Employment.

The security services knew of Bernhardt's loyalist connections; they knew he was the US dealer involved in the January 1988 arms shipment. They would also have known that Armscor agent Dick Wright had been employed as a marketing executive by Field Arms. Noel Lyttle later admitted he had known Wright as an Armscor agent representing the South African state for "quite a few years".

No request for the extradition of the three was made. Although the Swiss authorities began an investigation of Bernhardt's Geneva-based container leasing company Agencia Utica, the British made no request for an examination of Bernhardt or his company. The Ulster Resistance members were released on bail. Following the 'revelations' of contacts between the South African government and the Paris trio, the British government expelled the three South African embassy personnel. They were Staff Sergeant Mark Brunwer, who did not appear on the diplomatic list and was described in the press as a "technical officer": the First Secretary at the embassy, Jan Castelyn; and, Etienne Fourie. Although the British Foreign Office emphasized that they had been chosen at random, it must have been just another coincidence that one of them, Etienne Fourie, was considered the 'eyes and ears' of the London embassy and had worked as a journalist in the North in the 1970s.

Loyalist Arms Shipments Known by British Authorities

Two thirds of the arms shipment landed with the knowledge of British Intelligence on the County Down coast almost five years ago remains unaccounted for. The other third was seized at a road checkpoint. The results of its arrival, however, are unmistakable. In 1985 the UDA and UVF between them killed three people. Since January 1988 more than 160 people have killed by loyalists. The AK47 assault rifles were used in the killing of five people at the Ormeau Road shop in February 1992; and the killings in Murray's bookies on Belfast's Oldpark Road in December 1992; Michael Stone attacked the mourners in Milltown Cemetery in March 1988 with Russian RPG5 splinter grenades and a Browning pistol from the same arms consignment. The weapons created a secure base for a renewed and sustainable campaign of sectarian violence and murder by loyalist paramilitary groups. If his British government handler's explanation is to be believed, Brian Nelson must have an extraordinarily valuable agent if his safety had been paid for in hundreds of lives. How many more Brian Nelsons does British Intelligence have operating in the various loyalist murder squads?

The above chronicles one episode of Loyalist/British Intelligence gun-running activity. How other shipments have been secured since then?

Irish History