23. March 2024
The Nazi hunter and the lost IRA documentary
The Nazi hunter and the lost IRA documentary
Zwy Aldouby filmed the majority of the IRA secret leadership between March and June 1972. The film has not been seen by the public for almost 50 years. It is the subject of a new BBC documentary called #34;The Secret Army. The documentary will be on BBC iPlayer on 27 March.
Former IRA members who took part in the film said they were unaware of Aldouby intelligence connections. Also among those filmed handling guns and bombs was Martin McGuinness, then a rising young IRA leader. As a Sinn Féin politician he became the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. The Haganah is a group of former members of the British Army.
It was formed to fight against the Nazis in the Second World War. It is now part of the Israel Defense Forces, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Haganas are part of a larger group called the Israel Defence Forces. Degrelle had been sentenced to death in his own country but was living openly in Spain, under the protection of the dictatorship there.
He was called the Quisling of Belgium, and was the top Nazi official in Belgium. In 1961, he came up with an audacious plan - to kidnap a Belgian Nazi. The plot failed when Aldouby and an accomplice were captured with guns by Spanish police. He spent the next three years in jail, with Israel denying being behind the plot.
The whole affair was monitored by US intelligence and FBI director J Edgar Hoover even sent a memo about him to CIA counterpart James Jesus Angleton. The Secret Army will be available on the BBC iPlayer on Wednesday, 27 March. It will also be shown on BBC Two Northern Ireland and BBC Four on 02 April. Richard Kerr, a retired deputy director of the CIA, told the BBC team that Aldouby was almost certainly feeding intelligence to his former comrades.