Nanec Hikov, a Russian crew member on the Russian cargo vessel Natali 1, was taken into custody in the North Cyprus port of Famagusta over a purported episode of espionage, as disclosed in Turkish Cypriot media accounts earlier this month. He was allegedly discovered photographing Turkish troopships, and occupation authorities expressly ban any and all photo…

The North Korean defector designated solely in the Seoul Central District Court by his last name of Ahn, drew a four year prison sentence earlier this month for conspiring to murder Park Sang-hak, another North Korean defector who has become a high profile anti-Pyongyang activist. When arrested in September of 2011, Ahn, known to have served…

A Daily Telegraph report earlier this month claimed that as much as fifty percent of the personnel staffing the Russian embassy in London might be engaged in espionage. A prominent KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky, cautioned that the mid-1980s norm of 39 intelligence officers operating out of the embassy could have been surpassed. Mr. Gordievsky served as…

Formal espionage charges were filed last week against Vladimir Lazar, a retired colonel, for allegedly providing classified topographical maps to the Pentagon. Investigators asserted said information could be employed in organizing military operations against Russia and was applicable in coordinating missile strikes. According to the prosecution, Lazar, a former member of the topography service, bought a…

The British intelligence agency MI5 unmasked a murder plot against Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen politician living in exile in England, according to news reports last week. Mr. Zakayev fled his homeland, the rebel Russian republic engulfed in a brutal civil war, ten years ago, and thereafter received asylum from the British government. He serves as the…

ESET, a Slovakian security firm, claims that the Georgian government’s website figured in a botnet’s cyber-spying on denizens of that nation. Win32/Georbot infected a small number of computers, approximately 200, primarily in Georgia, with 30% located in the United States, Germany, and Russia. According to ESET researcher Righard Zwienenberg, the Georbot searched on the hard drives…

Abdullah al-Senussi, Libya’s former head of intelligence and one of the most humted figures of the toppled Gadhafi regime, is now the subject of an extradition tug of war between Libya, France, and the International Criminal Court (ICC), following his arrest in Mauritania earlier this month. The late Moammar Gadhafi’s brother-in-law was taken into custody at…

Greek authorities filed formal charges earlier this month against “persons unknown” for purportedly plotting to assassinate Kostas Karamanlis, the Prime Minister at the time of the conspiracy dating from 2007-2009, in order to undermine the government. An anonymous court official disclosed that the initial inquiry entailed interviews of Greek police, Secret Service members, and the Karamanlis’…

Azerbaijani officials reported last week the arrests of 22 suspects charged with being Iranian agents, amid assertions of connections to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The National Security Ministry’s short announcement gave no indication of when the arrests occurred and, therefore, was ambiguous as to whether the referred to arrests had just taken place, or if the statement…

Earlier this month came word that the death sentence handed down by Iran’s Revolutionary Court upon the conviction of Amir Mirza Hekmati in January on charges of working for the CIA, had been overturned by that country’s Supreme Court. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei revealed at a news conference in the Iranian capital that the Supreme Court…

Afghan intelligence disclosed in late February the arrests of a high level Afghan diplomat along with another three government employees a month before, the four alleged to have been operatives for Pakistan and Iran. According to Lutfullah Mashal, spokesman for Afghanistan’s spy agency, the charges brought against the suspects were grounded in solid proof and related…

Petty Officer 2nd Class Bryan Minkyu Martin was taken into custody by NCIS and FBI agents on December 1st of last year for various alleged espionage related offenses, and earlier this month Navy officials disclosed the formal charges filed against him. The complete tally entails four counts of attempted spying, with an additional 11 counts of
improper…

Tze Chao, an ex DuPont employee from Delaware, pled guilty to one count of economic espionage in United States District Court in San Francisco earlier this month, specifically confessing that in 2008 and 2009 he passed on DuPont trade secrets regarding titanium dioxide production to the Chinese government directed Pangang Group Company Ltd. Mr. Chao had…

Taiwan’s military was forced to contend once again with allegations of a spy for mainland China in their midst, amid reports at the end of February of an Air Force captain taken into custody on suspicion of handing over classified information to China, following as they do the highly publicized arrest of Army General Lo Hsien-che…

Aleksei Dressen, a member of Estonia’s security police for almost two decades, and his wife, Viktoria Dressen, were taken into custody on February 22 at Tallinn Airport for purportedly turning over classified information and state secrets to Russia. According to prosecution spokeswoman Kadri Tammai, Mr. Dressen went to the airport to drop off a folder containing…

Nicholas Davies, a reporter known professionally as Nick Jones, and Gareth Montgomery-Johnson, a cameraman, both Welsh freelancers for the Iranian television station Press TV, were arrested in Tripoli late last month, and are the subjects of an espionage investigation, according to Sadoon Alswehle, commander of the Misratan militiamen holding them. The two British citizens were being…

The Egyptian daily publication Al-Ahram identified the purported Mossad accomplice of accused Israeli spy Bashar Ibrahim Abu-Zeid as Ophir Harari in its account on February 24th of the spy trial currently underway in Egypt. Jordanian engineer Abu-Zeid was an employee of the leading Egyptian mobile service provider Mobinil, and allegedly attempted to smuggle 300 SIM cards…

A Lebanese military tribunal handed down the death penalty on February 24th to three Lebanese men convicted of espionage as Israeli agents. Lebanon and Israel are still technically at war and so a conviction on spying charges can carry a death sentence. According to Naharnet, a Lebanese news website, one of the men, Moussa Ali Moussa…

An ex operative for the MIT, Turkey’s intelligence organization, referred to only by the initials OS in that country’s news accounts, was placed in Turkish custody along with four others in early February, awaiting indictment on charges related to the kidnapping of two former Syrian military officers from a refugee camp in Hatay province, and their…

A well placed source has disclosed to the Associated Press under cover of anonymity that the Swedish government ordered a Rwandan diplomat to leave the country earlier this month because of espionage targeting Rwandan exiles living there. A second anonymous source identified the Rwandan envoy as Evode Mudaheranwa, who held the second highest ranking position at…

A Russian military tribunal handed down a conviction on the 10th of this month in the case of Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Nesterets, who had entered a guilty plea to charges of turning over classified information on Russian missiles to the CIA, and consequently decreed a 13 year prison term. According to the Federal Security Service, successor…

Two men, identified solely as Akram O. and Mahmoud El A., a Syrian national and a German-Lebanese dual citizen respectively, were taken into custody in Berlin on the 7th on suspicion of espionage targeting Syrian opposition groups operating in Germany. They are alleged to have carried out a systematic monitoring spanning a number of years. The…

U.S District Judge Ruben Castillo last week found onetime Motorola software developer Hanjuan Jin guilty of stealing industry secrets from her former employer, but failed to convict on the more serious economic espionage charges, citing insufficient evidence the naturalized American citizen was a foreign operative. The bench trial held in Chicago underscored national jitters concerning China’s…