Sixty-eighth edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 22:02:39 +0100)

Intelligence news

China

Xinhua News Agency reports that China arrested 43 people in a Taiwan spy ring bust. 24 of them were Taiwanese and 19 were from the People's Republic. Taiwan (of course) denied the same report.

Russia

FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev states that the FSB caught five foreign spies this year and "Espionage and other subversive activities of 14 other career spies and of 37 agents of foreign governments, including two Russian citizens, have also been stopped". He did not say from what countries the spies were. (Source: ITAR-TASS/AP)

On 29th December, a jury acquitted a Russian physicist of espionage charges today, a rare defeat for the FSB. The trial of Valentin Danilov, a professor at Krasnoyarsk Technical University in Siberia, is among a series of high-profile spy cases against Russian researchers that have alarmed the scientific community and raised fears of a resurgence of Soviet-era KGB tactics.

(Source: Associated Press)

Israel / India

According to the Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk, Israeli officials have recently flown to New Delhi to complete the sale of sophisticated spy planes to India. The arms deal, one of the largest ever made by Israel, is worth more than $1 billion.

Israeli officials say India will buy three Israeli-made Phalcon airborne early warning systems. The Phalcon consists of sophisticated radar mounted on a Russian-built cargo plane.