Swedish intelligence agent gets life for spying for Russia
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Stockholm (AFP) – A former Swedish intelligence officer was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for spying for Russia’s military intelligence service between 2011 and 2021, and his brother was jailed for 10 years.
The Stockholm district court found 42-year-old Peyman Kia, who served in Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo and in military intelligence units, and his brother Payam, 35, guilty of “gross espionage”.
The brothers, Swedish citizens of Iranian origin, had “together and in agreement, illegally and for the benefit of Russia and the GRU, acquired, transferred and disclosed information whose disclosure to a foreign power could damage Sweden’s security”.
The court found Peyman Kia guilty of collecting some 90 classified documents through its jobs.
His brother was found guilty of planning the crime and managing contacts with the GRU and passing on about 45 of the classified documents.
They were arrested in 2021, years after Sapo first suspected a mole in its organization and counterintelligence began investigating Peyman Kia.
The pair have been in custody since their arrest. Both denied the allegations.
Peyman Kia was sentenced to life in prison for espionage “of the most serious category”, Judge Mans Wigen said, adding that he had abused the trust given to him as an intelligence officer to help Russia, which represents “the biggest threat to Sweden”. “.
Despite a wealth of evidence including USB sticks, laptops, hard drives and mobile phones, the court admitted there was much it had been unable to establish.
“After studying the evidence, it is clear that some pieces of the puzzle are missing and it has therefore not been possible to determine with certainty what has happened,” they write in a statement.
Possible money motive
The court speculated that the brothers may have been motivated by money.
It found, among other things, that Peyman Kia handled cash worth around 550,000 kroner (almost $50,000) in 2016-2017, more than 80 percent of it in US dollars, which it said was likely payment from Russia for the classified documents.
Much of the investigation and court hearing, and Thursday’s full court order, was considered classified information and was therefore not made available to the public.
The trial coincides with another spectacular espionage case believed to have benefited Russia, where a couple of Russian origin were arrested last year at their home in a Stockholm suburb in a dawn police helicopter raid.
Moscow allegedly installed the pair, named by the Bellingcat investigative website as Sergei Skvortsov and Elena Koulkova, as sleeper agents in the late 1990s.
According to Swedish media, the couple managed specialized import-export companies that traded in electronic components and industrial technology.
Skvortsov was temporarily detained in November for “illegal intelligence activities” while his companion was arrested on suspicion of complicity before being released although she remains a person of interest in the investigation.
Swedish authorities say the case is not connected to the brothers’ Kia.
© 2023 AFP