Spy story

Mystery surrounds Swiss arrest of suspected Russian spy

A suspected Russian agent was arrested and sentenced in Switzerland in January according to media reports. As details emerge about the case, the circumstances surrounding the conviction and eventual release remain mysterious.

According to the German language paper SonntagsZeitungexternal link, which acquired a summary of the charges, police officers stopped a man in Geneva in July 2019 who had fake license plates and was traveling with six cell phones, a drone, a camera and a laptop.

After a few months, an investigation by the federal prosecutor concluded that the man was a Russian spy. In January, the prosecutor sentenced him to a six-month prison sentence for espionage, without a public trial. Because the man was charged in pre-trial detention, he was released.

The short investigation time and the light punishment raise suspicions that the prosecutor wanted to close the case as quickly and quietly as possible in order to brush aside a diplomatically sensitive matter.

According to the paper, the man was on a mission to spy on dissidents or oligarchs, who fell out of favor with the Kremlin. Several parts of the document are blacked out but the smartphone messages from the investigation indicate that the man was a low-level officer in the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR.