Sir Christopher Curwen , who has died aged 84, was head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) from 1985 to 1988, and it was under his aegis that the Service brought off one of its most spectacular coups, the exfiltration from Moscow of the agent Oleg Gordievsky.
Successively code-named FELIKS and OVATION after being recruited by SIS in 1974, Gordievsky was its star source inside the KGB. He had provided valuable reports at a critical time in the Cold War, a period in which paranoia at the Kremlin had become so pronounced that Nato’s 1983 ABLE ARCHER exercise had been misinterpreted in Moscow as a possible cover for a surprise attack on the Soviet Bloc.
As well as producing enormous quantities of documents from the rezidentura (KGB station) in London, where he had been posted in June 1982 , Gordievsky had identified KGB personnel in the First Chief Directorate ’s British and Scandinavian department and had shed light on dozens of past cases.
While posted to Copenhagen, Gordievsky had alerted SIS to two of the KGB’s most important sources in Norway: Gunvar Haavik and Arne Treholt. Code-named GRETA, Haavik was a secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had been spying since she had conducted a love affair in 1947 with a Soviet while she was working at the Norwegian embassy in Moscow. Haavik had been arrested in January 1977 in the act of passing information to her KGB case officer in an Oslo suburb, and confessed to having been a spy for almost 30 years. Arne Treholt, also employed by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, was arrested in January 1984 in possession of 66 classified documents . He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
Gordievsky’s greatest triumph, however, was to prevent a potentially massive breach of security in MI5. This was the unmasking of Michael Bettaney, who since December 1982 had been working for the Soviet counter-espionage section, and had made three anonymous approaches to the KGB rezident (head of station) in London, Arkadi Gouk, offering to supply him with MI5 secrets. SIS’s tip from Gordievsky led to a discreet mole-hunt, swiftly conducted inside MI5 by Eliza Manningham-Buller, who identified the culprit without compromising the source of the original tip. In April 1984 Bettaney was sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment .
With scalps such as these, Gordievsky was considered SIS’s most valuable source, and elaborate measures had been taken to protect him. He was, for example, given the front-door key to a flat, close to the Soviet embassy in London, to which he could disappear with his family should the need arise.
Curwen’s appointment as “C” (as the head of MI6 is known) coincided with just such a crisis. On Friday May 17 1985, having just been promised the job of rezident (head of station) in London , Gordievsky was suddenly summoned back to Moscow, supposedly for consultations.
On his arrival Gordievsky realised that his apartment had been searched; and when he reached FCD headquarters he was accused of being a spy. When he denied it, his interrogators used drugs in an unsuccessful attempt to extract a confession, and he concluded that, although the KGB had been tipped off to his dual role, there was insufficient evidence to justify an arrest. Although he remained under constant surveillance, in late July Gordievsky was able to shake off his watchers while jogging in a park and send an emergency signal to SIS requesting a rescue .
The “signal” was nothing more elaborate than Gordievsky’s appearing on a pre-arranged street corner, at a particular time, carrying a Harrods shopping bag — but it was enough to prompt Curwen to brief Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Office private secretary, Charles Powell, who immediately flew to Scotland, where the Prime Minister was staying with the Queen at Balmoral. After consultation with the Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, Mrs Thatcher approved a high-risk plan to get Gordievsky out of Moscow and into the West.
The ruse — originally conceived by John Scarlett, himself a future Chief of SIS — was for MI6’s Moscow station commander, Viscount Asquith, to play the “Good Samaritan” by driving a pregnant member of the embassy staff in his Saab for medical treatment in Helsinki; Gordievsky — having evaded his KGB watchers — joined the car at a rendezvous outside Leningrad and was driven over the frontier with Finland at Viborg. He was then driven to Trömso in Norway, and the next day flew from Oslo to London.
Gordievsky was briefly accommodated at a country house in the Midlands, where Curwen visited him, and then at Fort Monckton, Gosport, where he underwent an 80-day debriefing conducted by SIS’s principal Kremlinologist, Gordon Barrass. Among Gordievsky’s other visitors was the US Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Casey, who was flown down to the fort for a lunch hosted by Curwen, a celebration of one of SIS’s most impressive post-war coups.
Although Gordievsky’s safe exfiltration was a source of great pride for Curwen and his staff, there remained considerable concern about precisely how the agent had been compromised. One possibility was that, after so many setbacks, the KGB had worked out for itself that a mole had been at work within the organisation. Or had Gordievsky’s dual role somehow been leaked by a mole?
It was not until the CIA arrested the Soviet spy Aldrich Ames in February 1994 that an explanation was offered. Ames claimed to having identified Gordievsky to the Soviets as a source who had penetrated the KGB in Denmark and London — although there were doubts that he was telling the truth.
Gordievsky’s defection was nevertheless a devastating blow for the KGB, and the expulsion of the London rezidentura, ordered on the basis of his information, had a colossal impact on the organisation .
Resettled under a new identity near London, Gordievsky published his memoirs, Last Stop Execution, in 1994. As well as describing his role in compromising KGB spies in Norway and in Sweden, he revealed that the KGB rezidentura in London had cultivated several highly-placed trade union leaders (among them Richard Briginshaw and Ray Buckton), and that the Soviet embassy had been in touch with what he termed “confidential contacts” – influential individuals (including three Left-wing Labour MPs, Joan Lester, Jo Richardson and Joan Maynard) who could be relied upon to take the Kremlin’s lead on political controversies.
The constitutional implications of Gordievsky’s disclosures were considered sufficiently important for Curwen to brief the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, who in turn called in Tony Blair, as leader of the Opposition, to explain the situation to him.
The son of a vicar, Christopher Keith Curwen was born on April 9 1929 and educated at Sherborne, where he was a friend of David Sheppard, later the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. During National Service as a second-lieutenant with the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars in Malaya, Curwen was mentioned in dispatches for his gallantry in jungle warfare against communist guerrillas. An officer who served alongside him in Malaya said of Curwen: “There are some people you’d go into the jungle with and some you wouldn’t. I would be very happy to go back into the jungle with Chris… He was tough and fair. He was an excellent officer and his men liked him very much.”
Curwen went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he was a keen rower and occasional rugby player. He joined the Cambridge Union but seems to have shown little interest in politics. In the summer of 1951 he drove across the Sahara after visiting his elder brother, then working in the Colonial Service in Nigeria.
In July 1952 he joined SIS and two years later, in 1954, was posted to Thailand to work for Robert Hemblys-Scales, where he became fluent in Thai. In July 1956 he was moved to Vientiane, where he married his first wife, Vera Noom Tai, a physiotherapist who later worked at St Thomas’s Hospital.
Curwen returned to head office in Broadway in 1958, but by 1961 he was back in Bangkok, before spending two years in Kuala Lumpur. After another spell in London , in May 1968 he began a three-year appointment as SIS’s liaison officer in Washington, DC . A Washington colleague described him as “a very gentle chap. I can’t think of anyone more low-key than him.”
Other diplomats who worked alongside Curwen described him as hardworking and discreet. “[He] was very scrupulous,” one recalled. “He used to refer all his activities for approval to me and I give him full marks for that. Of course, there may have been some that he didn’t refer to me.”
In 1977 Curwen’s first marriage was dissolved, and in the same year he married his former secretary, Helen Stirling. He was posted to Geneva as head of station, and in May 1980 was back in London as “C”’s Deputy, succeeding Sir Colin Figures in July 1985 — just in time to be confronted by the Gordievsky crisis.
Mrs Thatcher had been less than impressed by MI6’s performance in the months leading up to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982. It is said that Curwen’s appointment as C was promoted by Sir Antony Duff, the director-general of MI5.
His selection as “C” was unusual in that “Far East Hands” are rarely appointed to the post, which more usually goes to a Kremlinologist or Middle East specialist. Curwen’s four-year tenure had the advantage of a burgeoning budget, after the Prime Minister insisted that more funds be made available for SIS after years of financial cuts.
Curwen was appointed CMG in 1982 and KCMG in 1986.
On his retirement in November 1988, Curwen succeeded Colin Figures as the Cabinet Intelligence Coordinator, helping the Prime Minister to manage administrative issues across the whole of the intelligence community. In 1991 he recommended in a review, undertaken on behalf of the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee, that MI5 should continue to lead the Metropolitan Police Special Branch in operations against the Provisional IRA.
He finally retired in 1991, when he took on a part-time role as a member of the Security Commission, a body which became redundant when the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee was created three years later .
Sir Christopher Curwen, who retired near Bath, listed his interests in Who’s Who as books, gardening and motoring.
He had five children: a son and two daughters with his first wife, and a son and a daughter with his second.
Sir Christopher Curwen, born April 9 1929, died December 18 2013
7:25PM GMT 23 Dec 2013
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MI6 agents in Afghanistan were told they were not obliged to intervene if they witnessed suspected terrorists being harmed by their American captors, an official inquiry into allegations Britain was complicit in torture has disclosed.
It also concluded that UK operatives “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of captives who were believed to be al-Qa’ida fighters.
Sir Peter Gibson’s investigation listed 27 areas he believed needed further inquiry, including whether the Government should have done more to obtain the release of UK nationals locked up at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
It suggested that the Labour minister Jack Straw should have asked more questions when he was Foreign Secretary about the UK’s possible involvement in activities in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Documents released by Sir Peter, a former High Court judge, showed an MI6 officer reported back to headquarters in London what he had seen as American officers interrogated captives at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, in January 2002.
A telegram he received in reply read: “It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this.”
He was reminded that the “Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it”.
But the telegram made clear there was no automatic requirement to intervene if UK officers witnessed inhuman treatment of captives. It said: “If circumstances allow, you should consider drawing this to the attention of a suitably senior US official locally.”
No official complaint over the episode was passed to the American authorities and seven days later Tony Blair reassured MPs that detainees in the US detention camp of Guantanamo were being treated humanely.
Sir Peter said he wished he has been able to investigate further “whether in some cases, UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others and used this to their advantage when resuming an interview session with a now compliant detainee”.
The inquiry was set up two and a half years ago by David Cameron but was heavily criticised by human rights lawyers who abandoned co-operation.
It was scrapped last year and responsibility for examining alleged complicity transferred to a parliamentary committee. Human rights groups denounced the decision as a “whitewash”.
Sir Peter on Thursday published an interim report setting out the reasons he believed his inquiry should be re-established.
In a damaging finding, he said: “A theme that runs through a number of the lead cases considered by the inquiry is whether treatment issues – such as sleep deprivation, hooding and media reports of waterboarding – were raised appropriately with the relevant liaison partner responsible for the detention and treatment in question”.
He said the inquiry had received papers suggesting that in “some instances there was a reluctance to raise treatment issues” for fear of harming relations with the United States.
The inquiry also found that while no formal request was put to the UK, records show the Government was aware that US officials were considering the use of Diego Garcia, an island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, for holding or transiting detainees between November 2001 and January 2002.”
The report said: “There is an issue as to whether the Government and the Agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.”
Mr Straw told MPs on Thursday: “As Foreign Secretary I acted at all times in a manner which was fully consistent with my legal duties with national and international law. And I was never in any way complicit with the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state.”
Nigel Morris
Thursday, 19 December 2013
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Al Jazeera investigates how information gathered through torture of Gaddafi dissidents was used to track Libyans in UK.
Last updated: 18 Dec 2013 18:04
Intelligence extracted by torture in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison has been linked to arrests of Libyan dissidents in the United Kingdom, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s People and Power has revealed.
In this exclusive report, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the anti-Gaddafi resistance group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), explains that he and fellow leader Sami al-Saadi were subjected to torture by his Libyan interrogators, which forced them to give up the names of innocent residents in the UK.
Al-Saadi and Belhaj also claim foreign agents, including British agents, questioned them in Abu Salim prison. These allegations form the basis of a lawsuit against the British government.
According to Belhaj’s lawyers, the men and their families were pawns in a deal struck by Britain in 2004.
After Gaddafi’s fall, the role played by British intelligence agencies was discovered.
“When the rebels came to Tripoli they ransacked all sorts of buildings … associated with Gaddafi’s old regime,” said Al Jazeera’s Juliana Ruhfus, who was involved in the investigation.
“It was in the office of spy chief Moussa Koussa that they found a stash of documents that revealed, in startling detail, the collaboration between British and Libyan intelligence services.”
Belhaj says he was pressured by Gaddafi’s interrogators to give up information about Libyans living in Britain.
“Sometimes they would come to me with the questions and answers already done and force me to sign it. They would mention names to me and say that these people supported armed activities,” he said.
One of the men named under torture was Ziad Hashem, a Libyan who obtained asylum in the UK after Belhaj’s rendition. Hashem claims he was arrested in Britain without any charges: “We were just put in prison arbitrarily without any explanation.”
Hashem is part of yet another law suit against the British government. One of the things he is hoping to reveal is the flow of information between Libyan and British intelligence agencies which led to his detention.
The British government says it is committed to investigating allegations of mistreatment, that it stands firmly against torture and that it never asks any other country to carry it out.
But the dissidents accuse the British government of being complicit in their rendition into Gaddafi’s prisons, showing Al Jazeera documents from MI6 tipping off Gaddafi’s intelligence apparatus about their flight movements.
Libya: Renditions airs on People & Power on Al Jazeera English from Wednesday 18 December at 10.30pm London time (22.30 GMT) and is available online at aje.me/libyarenditions
 
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CIA Central In Mandela’s Arrest … Kept Him On Terrorist List Until 2008
Everyone from President Obama to the mainstream news is lionizing Nelson Mandela.
But the New York Times reported in 1990:
The Central Intelligence Agency played an important role in the arrest in 1962 of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader who was jailed for nearly 28 years before his release four months ago, a news report says.
The intelligence service, using an agent inside the African National Congress, provided South African security officials with precise information about Mr. Mandela’s activities that enabled the police to arrest him, said the account by the Cox News Service.
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Newsweek reported in February that the agency was believed to have been involved.
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At the time of Mr. Mandela’s arrest in August 1962, the C.I.A. devoted more resources to penetrating the activities of nationalist groups like the African National Congress than did South Africa’s then-fledgling security service.
***
A retired South African intelligence official, Gerard Ludi, was quoted in the report as saying that at the time of Mr. Mandela’s capture, the C.I.A. had put an undercover agent into the inner circle of the African National Congress group in Durban.
Newsweek confirmed this story yesterday.
The Daily Beast notes:
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan placed Mandela’s African National Congress on America’s official list of “terrorist” groups. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that he be released from jail. In 2004, after Mandela criticized the Iraq War, an article in National Review said his “vicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his longstanding dedication to communism and praise for terrorists.” As late as 2008, the ANC remained on America’s terrorism watch list, thus requiring the 89-year-old Mandela to receive a special waiver from the secretary of State to visit the U.S.
…In South Africa, for decades, American presidents backed apartheid in the name of anti-communism. Indeed, the language of the Cold War proved so morally corrupting that in 1981, Reagan, without irony, called South Africa’s monstrous regime “essential to the free world.”
Indeed, Nelson Mandela was only removed from the U.S. “terrorist” list in 2008.
Mandela was highly critical of U.S. foreign policy. And anyone – even U.S. citizens – critical of U.S. policy may be labelled a bad guy.
Posted on December 6, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
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© 2007 – 2013 Washington’s Blog

As the United States mourns the loss of one of the world’s greatest leaders, it’s important to remember the long and tenuous relationship between the U.S. and Nelson Mandela. Long before Mandela was South Africa’s first black president, he was considered a radical and a terrorist by both the white South African regime and the United States. His close association with South African communists, as well as his encouragement of civil disobedience and sabotage, was enough to convince the CIA to get involved. Shortly after he was released in 1990 from a 28-year stint in prison, the New York Times reported that an undercover CIA agent within Nelson Mandela’s party, the African National Congress, was pivotal in Mandela’s 1962 arrest. The agent provided “South African security officials with precise information about Mr. Mandela’s activities that enabled the police to arrest him.” An unidentified source from within the CIA also told the New York Times, We have turned Mandela over to the South African Security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. The CIA maintained an extensive file on Mandela, even while he was in prison. The document below, declassified in 2001, shows how in 1986 the CIA ran hypothetical scenarios to see what South Africa would be like if Mandela were free. The documents also show an analysis of how prison may have changed Mandela’s view on violence as a protest tactic. The next document, seen below, was declassified by the CIA in 2003 and dates back to 1961. One year before Mandela was arrested, the CIA wrote of him: Nelson Mandela, who led the strike campaign in May, reportedly stated in mid-September that an ANC sabotage campaign would begin in the near future. Mandela said that the campaign would concentrate initially on telephone lines and government offices but later might include roadblocks and railroad sabotage. Nelson Mandela is a world hero for his work in the fight against racial and economic inequality and oppression. This week, as the United States reflects back on Mandela and his struggle, it must also remember the role that it played in maintaining the status-quo in South Africa.
Published:9:23 pm EST, December 7, 2013| Updated:10:03 am EST, December 8, 2013| Comment | 1.2k By Matthew Guariglia
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Document 1
Document 2

As South Africa prepares to hold a state funeral for Nelson Mandela, we look at how the CIA helped the South African government track down and capture Mandela in 1962. In 1990, the Cox News Service quoted a former U.S. official saying that within hours after Mandela’s arrest a senior CIA operative named Paul Eckel admitted the agency’s involvement. Eckel was reported as having told the official, “We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.” Several news outlets have reported the actual source of the tip that led to the arrest of Mandela was a CIA official named Donald Rickard. On Thursday, Democracy Now! attempted to reach Rickard at his home in Colorado. On two occasions, a man who picked up the phone hung up when we asked to speak with Donald Rickard. The activist group RootsAction has launched a campaign to urge the CIA to open its files on Mandela and South Africa, and the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has questioned why corporate media outlets have largely ignored the story. We speak to journalist Andrew Cockburn, who first reported on the CIA link to Mandela’s arrest in 1986 in The New York Times.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As South Africa prepares to hold a state funeral for Nelson Mandela, we end today’s show looking back at what happened on the day of August 5th, 1962, when South African police captured Mandela. On that day, Mandela was arrested while traveling disguised as a chauffeur. He would be held in jail for the next 27 years. On Tuesday, President Obama referenced Mandela’s time in jail during his speech at the memorial.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War. Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: While Obama referenced the Kennedy administration in his memorial, he made no mention of the multiple reports that the CIA, under Kennedy, tipped off the apartheid South African regime in 1962 about Mandela’s whereabouts. In 1990, the Cox News Service quoted a former U.S. official saying that within hours after Mandela’s arrest, a senior CIA operative named Paul Eckel admitted the agency’s involvement. Eckel was reported as having told the official, quote, “We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.”
AMY GOODMAN: Several news outlets have reported the actual source of the tip that led to the arrest of Mandela was a CIA official named Donald Rickard. On Thursday, Democracy Now! attempted to reach Rickard at his home in Colorado. On two occasions, a man who picked up the phone hung up when we asked to speak with Donald Rickard. Last year, Rickard denied the reports in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, but refused to talk about his time in South Africa.
Meanwhile, the activist group RootsAction has launched a campaign to urge the CIA to open its files on Mandela and South Africa.
We go now to Andrew Cockburn. He first reported on the CIA link to Mandela’s arrest in 1986 in The New York Times. He’s now the Washington editor for Harper’s magazine. His latest piece, on John Kerry and U.S. foreign policy, is called “Secretary of Nothing.” It’s out now in Harper’s.
Andrew, welcome back to Democracy Now!
ANDREW COCKBURN: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you found out in the mid-’80s. At this point, Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned for over 20 years.
ANDREW COCKBURN: That’s right. He had been—I found out—I reported that he had been—as you mentioned, that he had been arrested, thanks to a tip from the CIA, while disguised as a chauffeur. He was actually—what I had heard at the time was he was actually on his way to meet an undercover CIA, an American diplomat who was actually a CIA official. So it made it rather easy for them to alert the South Africans where to find him.
I mentioned—I thought it was particularly interesting to report when I did in 1986, because at that point it was just when the sanctions were being introduced over—voted through by the Congress over President Reagan’s veto. So, and I had noticed that in the sanctions legislation, it said there should be no contact, official contact, with the South African military, and so on and so forth, except when intelligence required that, you know, they did have to have contact. So it was ongoing, this unholy relationship, which had led to Mandela being arrested and locked up for all those years, continued on through the ’60s, through the ’70s, through the ’80s, absolutely flourished, with the—for example, the NSA routinely handing over intercepts of the ANC to the South African secret police. And it was absolutely outrageous.
AMY GOODMAN: This is the National Security Agency that is, of course, the subject of so much global controversy right now, the NSA gathering this intelligence to give to the apartheid regime.
ANDREW COCKBURN: That’s right. I mean, it was—it was just absolutely routine. And, you know, we have to—this was all—maybe they would have done it anyway, but it was certainly in the Cold War context. I mean, there was—it’s hard to remember now what a sort of lather people got into about, you know, the Soviet threat to the trade routes. And there was a naval base, African naval base—or there is one at Simon’s Town, near the Cape. And there was, I remember, sort of the right—the defense lobby were continually going on about the terrible threat of the Soviets maybe getting hold of, you know, Simon’s Town, seizing vital facilities.
And it was an absolute—I mean, people, not surprising—well, people have sort of forgotten just how—what a Cold War battleground southern Africa was. Not only did they turn over Mandela, but they had this very close relationship. U.S. military intelligence cooperated very closely with South African military intelligence, giving them information about what was going on, what they were collecting in the rest of southern Africa. And, in fact, you know, the two countries—CIA and the South Africans collaborated on, you know, assisting the UNITA in the horrible civil war in Angola that went on for years and years with thousands of people dying. So, you know, this wasn’t just a flash in the pan, the tip-off that led to the coordination on the arrest of Mandela. It was absolutely a very deep, very thorough relationship that went on for decades.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in that vein, I wanted to ask you about the 1996 report by Jeff Stein in Salon that the CIA was involved in sabotaging the ANC for years.
ANDREW COCKBURN: That’s right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Stein quotes Mike Leach, a former South African intelligence operative who worked closely with the CIA, and Leach claimed that the CIA shared the recipe for a prussic acid, a, quote, “clear compound which, if inhaled, would give a massive coronary. If a doctor’s not looking for [prussic] acid he’ll put (the cause of death) down to natural causes.” Another trick, Stein writes, was to, quote, “launder anti-apartheid T-shirts in a fiberglass solution and hand them out to demonstrators, who would soon be convulsed in uncontrollable itching.” The CIA reportedly also offered training in bugging and wiretaps.
ANDREW COCKBURN: Well, that’s right. It shows that, you know, this is the agency that gave us the exploding cigar sent to Fidel Castro, or designed to be sent to Fidel Castro. You know, the sort of fascination with these rather puerile tricks went on and, yeah, were considered. I’d never heard any report that they actually did manage to give anyone a coronary or cause them frantic itching, but it was certainly, certainly in the scheme.
I mean, there was, you know, the CIA—and the other side of it is, of course, the CIA was meanwhile spying on the South Africans and had very good report on the, for instance, the South African nuclear program and the collaboration, the very active collaboration, of the Israelis in that program, which they fed back to Washington, when of course nothing was ever done about it. So, you know, they knew perfectly well what was going on, but no action was ever taken.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew Cockburn, you write in your 1986 piece that the clause in the new law, the comprehensive anti-sanctions—the comprehensive anti-apartheid sanctions bill that was introduced by Ron Dellums, the clause in it exempted intelligence cooperation from sanctions. That’s very important.
ANDREW COCKBURN: That’s right. I mean, that was slipped in—well, not slipped, I don’t know—inserted, obviously, in the legislation by the intelligence people here. Even though they may have regretted the whole imposition of sanctions anyway, they made sure that their unholy relationship was ongoing. And this, you know, 1986, and as I said, we know—we saw the fruits of it ongoing through the rest of that decade with the war in Angola. I mean, it was a huge operation that people have completely forgotten about now.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew, we have to wrap up, but the Philadelphia journalist and professor Linn Washington wrote a piece this week, “Obama Failed to Deliver Long-Overdue Apology to Mandela.” Your thoughts, as we wrap?
ANDREW COCKBURN: Well, I think, yeah, he did, certainly. And it would be nice if, you know, there was some acknowledgment of just how—you know, of the relationship that helped sustain apartheid for all those years. I mean, it couldn’t—I don’t think it would have existed or survived with such force, let alone keeping—you know, sending Mandela to jail, if it hadn’t had such thoroughgoing support from this end, from here in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Andrew Cockburn, I want to thank you for being with us. And, of course, President Obama has continually talked about the inspiration Nelson Mandela was in his own life and activism. Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor for Harper’s magazine, in 1986 wrote a piece about the CIA’s involvement in the capture of Nelson Mandela. His latest piece, on John Kerry and U.S. foreign policy, which we hope to talk to you about at a future time, “Secretary of Nothing,” it’s out now in Harper’s.
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Friday, December 13, 2013
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The Central Intelligence Agency played an important role in the arrest in 1962 of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader who was jailed for nearly 28 years before his release four months ago, a news report says.
The intelligence service, using an agent inside the African National Congress, provided South African security officials with precise information about Mr. Mandela’s activities that enabled the police to arrest him, said the account by the Cox News Service.
The report, scheduled for publication on Sunday, quoted an unidentified retired official who said that a senior C.I.A. officer told him shortly after Mr. Mandela’s arrest: ”We have turned Mandela over to the South African Security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be.”
Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment on the news-service report. ”As a matter of policy, we do not discuss allegations of intelligence activities,” he said.
Protecting Pretoria’s Rule
Reports that American intelligence tipped off the South African officials who arrested Mr. Mandela have circulated for years. Newsweek reported in February that the agency was believed to have been involved.
Mr. Mandela is scheduled to visit the United States beginning June 20 for a five-city tour that will include talks with President Bush and a speech before a joint meeting of Congress.
The news-service report said that at the time of Mr. Mandela’s arrest in August 1962, the C.I.A. devoted more resources to penetrating the activities of nationalist groups like the African National Congress than did South Africa’s then-fledgling security service.
The account said the American intelligence agency was willing to assist in the apprehension of Mr. Mandela because it was concerned that a successful nationalist movement threatened a friendly South African Govenment. Expansion of such movements outside South Africa’s borders, the agency feared, would jeopardize the stability of other African states, the account said.
Arrest at a Roadblock
A retired South African intelligence official, Gerard Ludi, was quoted in the report as saying that at the time of Mr. Mandela’s capture, the C.I.A. had put an undercover agent into the inner circle of the African National Congress group in Durban.
That agent provided the intelligence service with detailed accounts of the organization’s activities, including information on the whereabouts of Mr. Mandela, then being sought as a fugitive for his anti-apartheid activities.
The morning after a secret dinner party with other congress members in Durban, Mr. Mandela, dressed as a chauffeur, ran into a roadblock. He was immediately recognized and arrested.
The retired official said that because of concern over the propriety of the C.I.A.’s actions in the Mandela case, ”higher authorities” required that the State Department approve any similar operations in the future. The report said the State Department refused on at least three occasions to allow the agency to provide South African officials with information about other dissidents.
By DAVID JOHNSTON, Special to The New York Times
Published: June 10, 1990
Find this story at 10 December 2013
Copyright 2013
The New York Times Company

An Egyptian terrorist should be considered as a prime suspect in the Lockerbie bombing, according to a report by two leading investigators.
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Evidence used to convict Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was faked and police may have been misled by a member of the US secret services, the investigators allege. Their report instead blames Mohammed Abu Talb, a terrorist with links to Palestinian militant groups who is currently living in Sweden after serving a prison sentence for bombings in Europe.
Megrahi was given a life sentence for the bombing in 2001. He was released eight years later by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds as he had terminal cancer, and died last year.
The “Operation Bird” report – by Jessica de Grazia, former chief assistant district attorney in New York, and Philip Corbett, a former police officer and ex-security advisor to the Bank of England – concluded Talb had bribed a worker at Heathrow to smuggle the suitcase containing the bomb onto the flight.
The report also said a key piece of the evidence – part of a circuit board allegedly used in the bomb’s timer – was faked and a shirt in which it was supposedly found had been tampered with.
Ms de Grazia and Mr Corbett were commissioned to look into the case by Megrahi’s defence team while it was working on his second appeal, dropped after his release.
Their report, which was written in 2002 but never published, suggested police were “directed off course” and that this was “most likely” done by a senior official in the CIA.
“We have never seen a criminal investigation in which there has been such a consistent disregard of an alternative and far more persuasive theory of the case,” it added.
Talb was jailed for life in Sweden after being convicted of carrying out terrorist bombings in 1985 in Copenhagen, Denmark and Amsterdam, Holland. He did not respond to a request for comment from Al-Jazeera television.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora was a passenger on the plane, said Talb was “a life-long, proven terrorist”.
“I believe he played a crucial part in causing the Lockerbie disaster,” Dr Swire told Exaro, an investigative news website. “My elected government actively prevented me from obtaining my human rights to know why my daughter’s life was not protected, and who it was who killed her.”
Former MP Tam Dalyell, who helped enlist Nelson Mandela to negotiate the deal that saw Libya surrender Megrahi for trial, told The Independent that Megrahi was an innocent man used as a “sanctions buster” for Libya.
“I was amazed they didn’t point the finger at Talb and condemned Megrahi. I was astonished at the outcome,” he said.
John Ashton, co-author of Cover-Up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, wrote on his blog that the Operation Bird report’s claim that Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Council and “fellow travellers, including Hezbollah” carried out the bombing was “likely true”.
But he doubted Talb was the bomber, because he had recently been arrested then released by Swedish police and so would have suspected he was being followed.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said Megrahi’s relatives could ask for a posthumous appeal, “which Ministers would be entirely comfortable with”.
Ian johnston
Sunday 15 December 2013
Find this story at 15 December 2013
© independent.co.uk

Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime was publicly blamed by the US for the attack
The wreckage of the PanAm airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie Photo: AFP
The CIA secretly held Syrian militants, rather than Libya, responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, according to newly unearthed testimony from a former US spy in the Middle East.
Dr Richard Fuisz said in a sworn deposition in 2001 that he was told by up to 15 senior Syrian officials that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) had carried out the attack.
He also testified that CIA bosses told him the PFLP-GC was responsible, according to a lawyer’s note of a second deposition. Ahmed Jibril, the group’s founder leader, who is still alive at 75, was singled out as being to blame for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, killing 270 people.
“Numerous high officials in the Syrian government were quite affirmative on Jibril’s involvement in Pan Am 103,” Dr Fuisz told lawyers, during his deposition in Virginia in 2001.
Dr Fuisz gave his depositions in 2000 and 2001 at the request of Megrahi’s defence lawyers. However, the evidence came too late to be used in the trial. They were first published by Channel 4 News.The CIA declined to comment.
Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime was publicly blamed by the US for the attack, and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001. He was later released and died last year in Libya.
But serious doubts about the conviction have been raised by investigative journalists for several years, centring on forensic evidence, and Libya has strenuously denied involvement.
The PFLP-GC were in fact the first prime suspects in the investigation.
Experts suggested it may have been ordered by the Iranian government as revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by a US battleship months earlier, killing 290.
They added that blame may have been diverted from Iran in order to protect secret and delicate negotiations by George Bush’s US administration over western hostages.
Dr Fuisz, a businessman who is said to have been a senior US intelligence asset in the Middle East in the 1980s and 90s, said that the Syrian officials he spoke to interacted with Jibril “on a constant basis” and that he was widely regarded to be the mastermind behind the bombing.
Asked who the Syrian officials cited as their source for the information, he said: “My recollection is they were direct. They were not hearsay sources on their part.” Asked if that he understood that to mean that he was “being told by members of the Syrian government that Jibril, and or members of the PFLGC were taking credit for the bombing,” he replied: “Yes”.
Jon Swaine
10:32PM GMT 20 Dec 2013
Find this story at 20 December 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

As the moderate faction of the Syrian rebellion implodes under the strain of vicious infighting and diminished resources, the United States is increasingly looking to hardline Islamists in its efforts to gain leverage in Syria’s civil war. The development has alarmed U.S. observers concerned that the radical Salafists do not share U.S. values and has dismayed supporters of the Free Syrian Army who believe the moderates were set up to fail.
On Monday, the State Department confirmed its openness to engaging with the Islamic Front following the group’s seizure of a Free Syrian Army headquarters last week containing U.S.-supplied small arms and food. “We wouldn’t rule out the possibility of meeting with the Islamic Front,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday. “We can engage with the Islamic Front, of course, because they’re not designated terrorists … We’re always open to meeting with a wide range of opposition groups. Obviously, it may make sense to do so at some point soon, and if we have something to announce, we will.”
How soon the U.S. might engage with the powerful rebel faction, if it chooses to, is uncertain. On Saturday, Reuters reported that Syrian rebel commanders in the Islamic Front were due to meet U.S. officials in Turkey in the coming days to discuss U.S. support for the group. A Syrian opposition source speaking with The Cable said that efforts were in place to unite the Western-backed Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front under the same coalition. “There are negotiations planned for very soon between the [Free Syrian Army’s] SMC and the Islamic Front to determine what the relationship will be,” said the source. America’s role in coordinating the talks remains unclear.
Though the Islamic Front is not a U.S.-designated terrorist group, many of its members hold intensely anti-American beliefs and have no intention of establishing a secular democracy in Syria. U.S. interest in the group reflects the bedraggled state of the Supreme Military Council and the desire to keep military pressure on President Bashar al-Assad ahead of next month’s planned peace conference in Geneva. “The SMC is being reduced to an exile group and the jihadists are taking over,” said a senior congressional aide.
The creation of the Islamic Front was announced on Nov. 22 with the purpose of uniting the strength of prominent Islamist militias across the country. Seven Islamist groups, with a total estimated strength of 45,000 to 60,000 fighters, signed on to the merger.
Soon after its creation, the Islamic Front signed a charter that made it clear the group aimed to create a Sunni theocracy, not a Western-style democracy. The document rejected the prospect of any sort of representative government, arguing that in Islam, only “God is the sovereign.” It explicitly rejects secularism as “contradictory to Islam,” and argues that Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities can be protected on the basis of Islamic law.
Some of the comments from the Islamic Front’s top leaders support the contention that the group’s ideology comes dangerously close to that of al Qaeda though the front is not aligned with the terrorist network. Zahran Alloush, the Islamic Front’s military chief, has demonized Syria’s Alawite minority and called for them to be cleansed from Damascus. As he put it in a recent video: “The jihadists will wash the filth of the rafida [a slur used to describe Shia] from Greater Syria, they will wash it forever, if Allah wills it.”
Though the coalition’s beliefs are troubling, their military strength can’t be denied. By some estimates, it’s the single largest rebel command. With an inventory of heavy weaponry, tanks and artillery, experts say it’s both disciplined and generously funded by Gulf sources.
Washington isn’t simply looking for a place for the front. The U.S. also wants the Salafists to return the goods it took from the SMC’s warehouses in Bab al Hawa in northern Syria. In an unexpected takeover, the SMC lost its headquarters to the front last week while its top commander, Gen. Salim Idriss, was out of the country . “Obviously if there would be a meeting with the Islamic Front, it would be in the context, certainly, of the taking over of the SMC headquarters,” Harf said.
Any decision to engage or provide support to the Islamic Front risks angering non-interventionists in Congress. Senators such as Kentucky Republican Rand Paul have repeatedly warned the Obama administration against forging such alliances. “You will be funding allies of al Qaeda.”
At the same time, some interventionists in the U.S have given up hope that the U.S. can pick the right winner in Syria. “The Islamic Front entrenching power is the culmination of what we worried about,” said one hawkish Congressional aide. “By slow-rolling support to the SMC, only a fool would think they could survive on their own.”
Others fear that without U.S. coordination with the Islamic Front, the stalemate in Syria will persist and Assad will continue to exploit divisions between the rebels.
David Kenner contributed to this report.
BY John Hudson
DECEMBER 17, 2013 – 09:55 AM
Find this story at 17 December 2013
Copyright thecable.foreignpolicy.com

The top Western-backed commander of the opposition forces in Syria, General Salim Idris, has denied US claims that he was run out of the country by Islamist militants.
On Wednesday, US officials told the Wall Street Journal that Gen. Idris was forced to flee the war-torn country. On the same day, the US and Britain announced that they were freezing non-lethal aid to the opposition after radical militants from the Islamic Front took control of the Free Syrian Army’s bases in northern Syria.
Gen. Idris fled to Doha, Qatar on Sunday after leaving Syria for Turkey “as a result of the Islamic Front taking over his headquarters,” a senior US official said.
However, on Thursday, the Syrian National Coalition’s (SNC) official spokesman dismissed those claims as “laughable,” saying the commander is currently holding talks with the Islamic Front.
“General Selim Idriss is in the south of Turkey on the border of Turkey and Syria,” SNC spokesman Khaled Saleh told AFP in Istanbul. “Yesterday [Wednesday] he was actually meeting with the Islamic Front.”
“General Idriss is still in contact with the FSA brigades that are on the ground, he’s still in contact with the Islamic Front,” he added.
The Islamic Front is a coalition of the largest Islamist rebel factions, excluding two top Al-Qaeda-associated groups, the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria. It is considered more moderate among Islamist militant groups.
On Friday, radical militants from the organization seized several premises containing non-lethal aid from the US. The aid belonged to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army at the Bab al-Hawa crossing near the Turkish border, Reuters reported.
The Islamists acting on their own accord gave no warnings and provided no explanation for their actions.
“As a result of this situation, the United States has suspended all further deliveries of non-lethal assistance into northern Syria,” the US Embassy spokesman in Ankara said on Wednesday, stressing that humanitarian aid distributed through non-governmental organizations will not be impacted by the decision.
The growing strength of the Islamic Front has led to direct talks between the group and the US and its allies. Western officials said the goal of the communication was to persuade Islamists to support a Syria peace conference to take place in Geneva on Jan. 22.
As the Obama administration sorts through details of the takeover of FSA bases, it is urging Gen. Idris to return to Syria, US officials said.
Senior US officials said the warehouses seized by the Islamic Front appeared to contain both lethal and non-lethal material. A CIA spokesperson would not comment on whether American weapons, possibly supplied by the CIA, were involved. Gen. Idris reportedly receives weapons from other sources as well, such as Saudi Arabia.
US officials said the Islamic Front offered to protect Gen. Idris’ headquarters and the warehouse facilities from more extreme groups. Once they secured the area, “they asserted themselves and said: ‘All right, we’re taking over,” according to a senior official.
The officials said there was no battle over the warehouses between the Islamic Front and the SMC. One senior US official called the seizure “an internal coup,” though other officials disputed the characterization.
“I wouldn’t say this is the end of the SMC and the end of Gen. Idris,” a senior US official told WSJ.
The Obama administration said earlier Wednesday that it would like to work with the SMC, though the suspension of aid is indefinite. How the takeover will affect relations with the Islamic Front is still unclear.
The British government followed the US in suspending assistance to the SMC to ensure it would not be acquired by more extreme Islamist factions.
A White House spokesman said that US humanitarian assistance is not affected by the suspension.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that while the US remains supportive of the SMC, the halted aid will make cooperation more challenging.
Published time: December 12, 2013 03:31
Edited time: December 12, 2013 19:26
Find this story at 12 December 2013
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2013.

“The only ‘treatment’ people in Cambodia’s drug detention centers receive is being beaten, bruised, and forced to work. The government uses these centers as dumping grounds for beggars, sex workers, street children, and other ‘undesirables,’ often in advance of high-profile visits by foreign dignitaries.”
Joseph Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch.
(Bangkok) – Cambodian authorities unlawfully detain hundreds of drug users and others deemed “undesirable” in centers where they face torture, sexual violence, and forced labor, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called for the immediate closure of the country’s eight detention centers that are supposedly for drug dependency treatment.
The 55-page report, “‘They Treat Us Like Animals’: Mistreatment of Drug Users and ‘Undesirables’ in Cambodia’s Drug Detention Centers,” documents the experiences of people recently confined in the centers, who described being thrashed with rubber water hoses and hit with sticks or branches. Some described being punished with exercises intended to cause intense physical pain and humiliation, such as crawling along stony ground or standing in septic water pits. Former female detainees described rape and other sexual abuse by male guards. Many detainees said they were forced to work unpaid in the centers – and in some cases, on construction sites – and those who refused were beaten.
“The only ‘treatment’ people in Cambodia’s drug detention centers receive is being beaten, bruised, and forced to work,” said Joseph Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The government uses these centers as dumping grounds for beggars, sex workers, street children, and other ‘undesirables,’ often in advance of high-profile visits by foreign dignitaries.”
The report is based on Human Rights Watch interviews with 33 people previously held in drug detention centers in Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, Siem Reap, Koh Kong, and the capital, Phnom Penh. Along with drug users, authorities also lock up homeless people in the centers, as well as beggars, street children, sex workers, and people with disabilities. The centers are run by the Cambodian military, gendarmerie, police, Social Affairs Ministry, and municipal authorities.
“The most difficult thing is the beatings,” said “Pram,” a man in his 20s who was detained in the Orgkas Khnom center just outside of Phnom Penh for more than three months in 2013. “They happen every other day.”
People interviewed said they saw unaccompanied children as young as 6 in the detention centers. The children were held in the same rooms as adults, forced to perform exhausting physical exercises and military-like drills, chained, and beaten.
“The government admits that 10 percent of those held in the centers are children under 18,” Amon said. “Children who use drugs or who live on the streets should be protected from harm, not locked up, beaten, and abused.”
The report follows a 2010 Human Rights Watch report, “Skin on the Cable” that resulted in national and international attention to the issue of compulsory drug dependency “treatment” centers in the country. Following that report, the United Nations and donor agencies condemned the lack of due process and abusive treatment in centers in Cambodia and the region, while Cambodian government officials largely sought to dismiss the report as “untrue.”
In March 2012, 12 United Nations agencies issued a joint statement on drug detention centers that called on countries with these centers “to close them without delay and to release the individuals detained.” Cambodian authorities have not publicly responded to this call, investigated reports of torture and other abuses occurring in the centers, or prosecuted anyone for alleged criminal offenses. Since 2010 three drug detention centers have closed, yet the overall number of men, women, and children detained each year, approximately 2,200, remains constant.
The Cambodian government has also announced a plan to construct a large national drug treatment center in Preah Sihanouk province and approached Vietnam to finance the construction. Vietnamese drug detention centers hold individuals for longer periods and include forced labor as an official component of drug dependency “treatment,” raising concerns about the possible expanded influence of Vietnam that could come with financial assistance for drug detention center construction in Cambodia.
The Cambodian government should conduct a thorough and impartial investigation of arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, and forced labor in its drug detention centers, Human Rights Watch said. In line with the 2012 UN agency statement, everyone detained in the centers should immediately be released and all the centers closed. The government should replace the centers with expanded access to voluntary, community-based drug treatment.
“Inside Cambodia’s drug detention centers, arbitrary detention, forced labor, and physical and sexual abuse are carried out with impunity” Amon said. “These centers are ineffective, unjust, and violate human rights. They should be immediately closed and the men, women, and children being held within them released without delay.”
December 9, 2013
Find this story at 9 December 2013
Find the report at 9 December 2013
© 2013 Human Rights Watch

Iranian man arrested on charges of spying for British intelligence was passing on information on shipping operations to help impose sanctions, parliamentarians told
The Iranian man arrested for spying for British intelligence was helping foreign governments impose EU sanctions on covert oil shipping operations, parliamentarians in the country have been briefed.
An Iranian MP revealed the alleged MI6 agent was passing information on Iran’s shipping industries to its “enemies”, to be used in international efforts to cripple the sector.
Court officials in the city of Kerman said a suspect had confessed to holding 11 meetings inside and outside the country with British intelligence.
Alireza Manzari Tavakoli, an intelligence specialist in the Iranian parliament, was quoted on a news website claiming that the man handed over details of sanctions-busting activities. “We have received further information about the arrested individual that suggests that he has been involved in passing secret data on Iran’s shipping industries and the insurance covers on our oil tankers to the British intelligence services,” he said. “The EU could use them for imposing more sanctions on our shipping sectors.
“The arrested individual has also confessed to passing economic intelligence about Iran’s use of other countries’ flags in transporting its oil abroad. The information provided by this spy has been used by the enemies of the Islamic Republic to pass new and more sanctions on Iran.”
Britain’s role as the centre of the global maritime industry and leading insurance hub of the merchant fleet means London was pivotal to efforts to impose a virtual shutdown of Iran’s oil shipping through EU-wide sanctions.
Meanwhile Dadkhoda Salari, the public prosecutor in the city of Kerman, has described the alleged spy as a 50-year-old man, with good university education and fluent in English, who has never held any government job. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence agents had been monitoring his movements for the last two months.
Hardliners opposed to the current thaw in British relations with Iran could use the spying revelations to disrupt progress towards restoration of full diplomatic ties.
Conservative factions have already sought to secure the withdrawal of an invitation by Iran’s parliament to Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, to fly to Tehran for a fence-mending visit.
The announcement of the case came just a day after Iran’s new non-resident envoy to Britain, Hassan Habibollah-Zadeh, held talks in London on his first visit since his appointment last month. Ajay Sharma, his British counterpart, broke a two-year freeze in diplomatic relations earlier this month when, following the temporary deal on Iran’s nuclear programme in Geneva, he visited the Tehran embassy that was looted by an Iranian mob in November 2011.
By Damien McElroy, and Ahmed Vahdat
7:10PM GMT 15 Dec 2013
Find this story at 14 December 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

The alleged spy is said to have worked for British intelligence agency MI6 (pictured)
Iran says it has captured a spy working for British intelligence agency MI6 in the south-eastern city of Kerman.
The head of Kerman’s revolutionary court said the alleged spy had admitted being in contact with four British intelligence officers 11 times, both inside and outside the country.
He said the accused was now on trial and had confessed. The nationality of the alleged spy is not yet known.
The UK Foreign Office said it did not comment on intelligence matters.
Iran regularly claims to have captured spies working for foreign powers but in most cases the accused is released without charge months later.
According to a report from Iran’s conservative news agency Tasnim, the alleged spy was arrested after 10 months of intelligence work and had once had a meeting with British agents in London.
It quotes Dadkhoda Salari, the head of the Kerman court, as saying he is aged over 50, with an “academic education”. He is said to be fluent in English but does not hold an official post.
The news comes as Iran and Britain take steps to try to re-establish diplomatic relations.
Britain shut down its embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital, in 2011 after it was stormed in a protest over British nuclear sanctions.
‘Constructive discussions’
Iran’s envoy to the UK this week made his first visit to London, during which he met officials at the Foreign Office.
The visit followed a trip to Iran earlier this month by the UK’s new envoy to the country – the first by a British diplomat for two years.
Non-resident charge d’affaires Ajay Sharma said he had “detailed and constructive discussions” about the UK’s relationship with Iran.
He also visited the site of the British embassy in Tehran to assess the damage following the mob attack two years ago.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has said relations between the two countries were improving on a “reciprocal basis”.
Thawing relations between Tehran and the international community have also seen a temporary deal reached over its nuclear programme.
Iran last month agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for £4.3bn in sanctions relief, after days of talks in Geneva.
The country agreed to give better access to inspectors and halt some of its work on uranium enrichment for a six-month period.
14 December 2013 Last updated at 08:27 ET
Find this story at 14 December 2013
© 2013 The BBC

Authorities say they have arrested an individual who has confessed to working for British intelligence
The British Secret Intelligence Services Headquarters in London Photo: EPA
Iran claims to have captured a British “spy” in a move that has threatened to cause a diplomatic crisis.
Officials in the country said a businessman in his fifties had been detained on suspicion of gathering intelligence “in all spheres” for the British security services.
They claimed he had confessed to meeting MI6 agents inside and outside Iran on 11 occasions.
Iran’s decision to publicise the arrest comes at a critical stage of diplomacy between the two countries, which broke off all official contact after the attack on the British embassy in Tehran two years ago.
Experts have said that the arrest and its announcement may have been driven by hardliners who oppose a deal to prevent Iran gaining nuclear weapons.
IRNA, Iran’s state news agency, reported that security forces had arrested an alleged spy working for the British Government in Kerman, a south-eastern province. The nationality of the arrested man, who is alleged to have “confessed” to espionage, has not been disclosed. There was no suggestion he is a British national. Spying in Iran carries the death penalty.
A Foreign Office spokesman said she would not comment on intelligence matters. Government sources said that the tactic of arresting local people on false charges of being British spies was something that happened “every few months” but that they were usually not publicised by the regime.
It was feared that the arrest could signal a determination among Iranian hardliners to unseat negotiations with the West, including last month’s agreement on the country’s nuclear programme. The “spying” charge could compromise diplomatic achievements, although Whitehall is understood to be treating the development with caution.
The nuclear deal led to the first formal contact between the United States and Tehran since they severed diplomatic ties over the 1979 hostage crisis, and was viewed as a crucial step towards avoiding a crisis in the Middle East.
Tehran is known to have used trumped-up spying allegations in the past to resolve internal disagreements. Dadkhoda Salari, the head of Kerman revolutionary court, said the alleged spy was a man with “business activities” who established a link with the British embassy in Tehran before its closure.
“The accused has had 11 face-to-face meetings with British intelligence officers, both inside and outside the country, and in every single meeting has passed to his MI6 contacts the specific information that they had asked him to collect,” said Mr Salari.
An Iranian news agency used this picture to illustrate the capture of the spy
“At the same time he has received certain instructions that would have enabled him to act against the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“He had been in touch with four intelligence officers and after receiving their instructions and training he has transferred their specific requested information to the country of their origin.
“This spy has been captured after many months of complicated intelligence operations and with the help of the almighty God.”
Mr Salari added that the man’s trial was already taking place and that he had “confessed” to all charges. The judicial spokesman said the accused had academic qualifications and spoke fluent English, and claimed he had collected intelligence “in all spheres” for Britain.
Tasnim news, an Iranian news website, claimed one of the man’s alleged meetings with British intelligence took place in London.
The announcement came a day after Hassan Habibollah-Zadeh, Iran’s new envoy to Britain, made his first visit to London. Mr Habibollah-Zadeh said that negotiations were under way to “resolve the existing issues”, so full ties could be restored. It is unclear what effect, if any, the arrest of the alleged spy would have in those negotiations.
Prof Ali Ansari, the director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews and a senior associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, said: “This probably has more to do with some of the more hawkish and hardline elements within the revolutionary establishment trying to put a spanner in the works of the rapprochement negotiations.
“The Iranian regime has done a fantastic PR job over the last couple of months selling the country as being ‘open for business’. But this news sours that, and suggests the old Iran is alive and well.”
He added: “Kerman is in the middle of nowhere, there’s no nuclear facilities there and all they do is grow pistachios. So what this man could be accused of doing there is a little strange.”
Britain shut its Tehran embassy after it was damaged in November 2011 by students protesting against Western sanctions.
In another high-profile incident, in 2007, Iran seized 15 personnel from HMS Cornwall who were on anti-drug smuggling operations in the Gulf, and held them for 13 days. Their detention gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the then Iranian president, a public relations coup.
By David Barrett, and Robert Tait, in Jerusalem
8:00PM GMT 14 Dec 2013
Find this story at 14 December 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013