Russia is linked to ‘spy in the bag’ death
POLICE fear Russian assassins may have killed “spy in the bag” victim Gareth Williams after he discovered a mole inside GCHQ.
Counter-terrorism detectives are now probing links between the death of Williams, 31, and the nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
A KGB defector yesterday claimed Russian hitmen used a killer cocktail of poisons designed to leave no trace during post-mortem tests.
Williams, a codebreaker at Britain’s GCHQ centre was found dead inside a locked red holdall in his flat in Pimlico eight years ago. Officers initially believed his death was nothing more than a “sex game gone wrong”.
But two counter-terrorism detectives from Salisbury, where the Skripals were poisoned, are this week set to question KGB defector Boris Karpichkov.
The former spy, 59, claims Williams was killed because he had discovered a Russian mole, codenamed Orion, at GCHQ. Karpichkov, a former KGB major, said: “Russian security services are the connection between the two cases.”
The Russians allegedly planned to blackmail Williams into becoming a double agent by threatening to expose his cross-dressing hobby.
“Williams was foolish enough to say that he knew the person who tipped them off,” said Karpichkov.
“The SVR had no alternative but to kill him to protect their agent inside GCHQ.”