Russia announced on Tuesday it would seek a 20-year prison term for a top spy whose cooperation with the US led to last year’s humiliating expulsion of 10 of Moscow’s sleeper agents.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said it has concluded its probe into the former deputy head of its US clandestine operations department and charged him with treason and desertion.
Russian media have identified the suspect as Alexander Poteyev and said he has been hiding in the US since last year. Security officials believe a trial will be held in absentia.
“The FSB investigative department has concluded its investigation into Russian citizen A.N. Poteyev,” news agencies quoted an FSB statement as saying.
The exposure of the spies — who included the media sensation Anna Chapman and others who worked on the east coast of the US — left some intelligence officials conceding that their US surveillance program had been dealt a brutal blow.
Former spy and current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used a national television appearance in December last year to call the double agent a “pig” who will “regret it a thousands times over.”
One security agent told the Kommersant business daily last year that Russia was likely to organize a hit-squad to hunt down Poteyev in the US — an assertion later refuted by Putin.
Various Russian and Western media reports have painted Poteyev as a hardened intelligence officer who began his career in Afghanistan and worked in a crack unit that tried to install a pro-Moscow regime in Kabul in 1979.
He is believed to be a native of Belarus who worked as a foreign intelligence officer in New York and Washington after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, before returning to Moscow.
Multiple reports said Poteyev had until last year served as the deputy head of the US department of Directorate C — a covert operations agency involved in placing sleeper agents in foreign countries who try to pass off as locals.
“He fled Russia a few days before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s June trip to Washington and is currently in the United States,” Interfax quoted an unnamed security official as saying.
The same source said that both the man’s daughter and son had flown to the US “under various pretenses” in the days preceding his own departure from Russia.
“His wife has been living in the States from some time now,” the official said.
“These circumstances ... clearly accentuate the already severe miscalculation of our secret services,” the security official said.
The US announced the 10 Russians’ arrest just days after Medvedev’s visit and eventually swapped them for four Russians who allegedly spied for the West.
The exposed agents were personally greeted on their return to Russia by Putin and several have since established lucrative business careers.
The 29-year-old Chapman has cashed in on her fame by becoming the fodder of gossip papers and gracing the covers of various magazines, as well as hosting her own TV show about supernatural events.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of