SPIKED

As part of the settlement agreed today, a statement from Juliette Folens will be broadcast as part of the programme and a short segment will be edited out.

This is how RTÉ reported one element of the settlement arrived at after Albert Folens' widow took the network to court over their intention to broadcast a television programme accusing Albert of having been a brutal Nazi war criminal. Juliette was 83 at this stage. She had first met Albert when she was 19.

THE STOOGE ?

The more I look at all the evidence around the persecution of Albert Folens in Ireland, the more I am convinced there is a bigger game playing out here than I have understood to date.

FUGITIVE IRELAND

Albert Folens wasn't the only political refugee to arrive in Ireland after WWII. There were other Flemings fleeing the retribution of the Belgian state for having collaborated with the Germans during their occupation of their country. There was also a group of Bretons fleeing French retribution. What they had in common was that the state they belonged to had attempted over the years to suppress their Flemish and Breton cultures and languages. They succumbed to German promises to give their countries independence, or some degree of it, after the war if Germany won.

THE TAPE

In 1985 Albert Folens was interviewed by a journalist from the Sunday Tribune who had been alerted to the fact that Albert's wartime experience was a lot more than he pretended. It was possibly known at the time that Albert had been involved in the Flemish Legion, a supposedly independent regiment sponsored by the Waffen SS (the Nazi party's paramilitary wing).

What was certainly not widely known was that Albert had worked for the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi intelligence service, albeit in a purely desk job translating newspaper reports and keeping an eye on potentially subversive anti-German Flemish authors.