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Russian spy Chapman stripped of UK citizenship
Russian intelligence suspects there is a double agent among Anna Chapman and her fellow spies
Anna Chapman, the most glamorous of the 10 members of a Russian spy ring arrested and deported by the United States, has had her British citizenship revoked. And in another twist worthy of a Le Carre novel, it has emerged that Chapman and her nine colleagues are being held by the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence agency, in a compound while they attempt to unmask what they think is a double agent.
Lawyers for Chapman, who won UK citizenship through her marriage to a British man, have been handed a letter from the Home Office stripping her of it, after it was decided her presence would be "seriously prejudicial" to the UK's interests.
The law being applied to Chapman, also known as Anya Kushchenko, was introduced in 2002 to make it easier to deport Islamic radicals thought to be a risk to national security. It is expected Chapman will also be permanently excluded from Britain, according to BBC News.
Meanwhile, Chapman and the rest of the Russian spy ring, who were handed back to Russia in a prisoner exchange at Vienna airport last week, are being held in a secret compound near Moscow. The SVR suspects one of them is a double agent and is expected to spend the next two to three weeks attempting to unmask the person through lie detector tests and interviews.
"This should not be called an interrogation in the true sense of the word," a source told the Daily Telegraph. "But if it turns out that serious mistakes were made, spies, employees of the SVR, can be fired."
Wherever they are being held, the spies do seem to have some home comforts. The Daily Mail reports that Chapman – who for a supposed spy has rather a worrying addiction to social networking websites - has reactivated her Facebook account to post the opening line from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." She has also rather sensibly upped the privacy settings on her account.
It is likely the ten spies will soon be joined by an eleventh. The FBI has arrested an unnamed 23-year-old Russian it suspected of spying in the US. Although he has not been linked to any members of the spy ring, and there is not enough evidence to convict him, he will be deported for immigration violations. ·
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moderator: All well & good...but you don't seem to understand who is dangerous & who is not. The problem of radical Islam in this country is immediate & lethal. In any sensible country, Abu Hamza & his ilk would be history.
Clearly, the meek will NOT inherit the earth.
To answer scampy1 and David Postle, proceedings to strip Abu Hamza of his UK citizenship began in 2003 and are still ongoing. Chapman is entitled to appeal her own case, so we may not have seen the last of this femme fatale.
Hang about. If this law was introduced to deport Islamic radicals and has been applied so easily, how come, when we've got a radical to deport, they shout human rights and it all grinds to a halt?
I think the Iranian scientist might also be a double agent. His story is tops turvy.
Chapman stripped of citizenship but not Hamza and the other musim nutters allowed into the country by Blair and the nu lab stooges?