MYSTERY STILL UNSOLVED D SPY IN The 10 key questi N THE BAG ions.. 10 years on
IT is ten years this week that British spy Gareth Williams was found dead in a locked holdall in the bathroom of a secret service flat.
But the codebreaker’s death is still shrouded in mystery.
Some say it was a solo sex game gone wrong. Others think he was murdered by Russians to protect a British security services mole.
Here we look at the questions that still surround one of the most intriguing cases of modern times.
1 Why did no one raise the alarm when Gareth went missing for a week?
Gareth’s MI6 manager tried to contact him several times during the missing week and did not pursue it after drawing a blank. He told the inquest he had a “gut feeling” he’d been given a top secret assignment.
Peter Bleksley, a founder member of Scotland Yard’s undercover unit, said: “Somebody should have been dispatched immediately to find out where he was.
“The delay was potentially catastrophic to the investigation and is almost beyond comprehension.”
2
What happened in the five hours between the security services carrying out a welfare check and police being called?
Gareth’s sister Ceri called the security services around 11.30am on August 23 but police were not alerted until 4.30pm that day.
There is widespread speculation MI6 had the crime scene in Pimlico, central London “dry cleaned” – secret service slang for removing incriminating evidence such as fingerprints.
Peter Bleksley said: “I wouldn’t put anything past the security services when putting forward a set of circumstances which suit their interests.
“Just imagine how much of a coverup professional spies can conduct in five hours. It reeks of certain people not being truthful.”
3 Why was Gareth’s phone returned to its factory settings?
Gareth’s £500 iphone had all of its data wiped on August
15 – hours before he is believed to have died.
Insiders think it could have been used to contact a potential killer, but this has not been proved.
Peter Bleksley said: “Who restores their phone to factory settings if they’re not selling it? There are huge unanswered questions.”
4 Why was the heating on, on a warm August day?
Gareth’s body was so decomposed that certain poisons could not be detected. DCI Colin
who was at the scene, said e believed the heating was celerate decomposition”.
y wasn’t the rder inquiry told ry sticks had been ?
inquest it was revealed MI6 how memory sticks found in the flat to the inquiry. Scotland Yard said MI6 told them they contained “sensitive” material.
6 Why do the police and coroner disagree about why Gareth was killed?
Coroner Fiona Wilcox ruled that, on the balance of probabilities,
Gareth was unlawfully killed. But she added questions as to how Gareth died “remain unanswered”.
Yet in 2013, Scotland Yard concluded it was “probable” Gareth’s death was an accident.
Peter Bleksley says: “It’s extremely rare the coroner will reach a conclusion police don’t agree with. The police and security services had a convenient narrative that it was all down to Gareth – all too convenient for comfort.”
7 Why was it decided to hold part of the inquest in secret?
The Government signed a public interest immunity certificate, which meant some evidence relating to Gareth’s work – including operations with US secret services – had to be heard in private. This came after lawyers for MI6 claimed that disclosure of some of this information could harm national security.
8 Could the Russians have been involved in Gareth’s death?
In 2015 Russian defector Boris Karpichkov claimed Gareth was “exterminated” because he knew the identity of a Kremlin mole within British security services and had refused to become a double agent.
The former KGB major said they “had no alternative but to kill him to protect their agent inside GCHQ”.
Putin’s goons seem to favour poisoning, judging by how they targeted Litvinenko in London, the Skripals in Salisbury and now opposition politician Alexei Navalny.