Two Russian ‘lab hack spies’ expelled by Netherlands
TWO Russian spies were arrested in the Netherlands in the immediate aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings as they prepared to hack into the computers of the Swiss laboratory analysing Novichok, it has emerged.
The pair were detained in The Hague and deported to Russia following an intelligence operation run with British, Dutch and Swiss agents.
Their arrest in March is said to have been linked to the world-renowned Spiez laboratory near Bern that tested the Soviet-developed nerve agent used in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal weeks earlier.
Several sources told Swiss newspapers that the pair were preparing to target the lab. They reportedly possessed equipment which would allow them to break into its computer system.
The arrests throw a further spotlight on the two countries to which Mr Skripal’s alleged would-be assassins travelled several times in the months leading up to the attack.
Flight records show that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov made at least six trips to Geneva between November 2017 and February of this year.
They also travelled in and out of Amsterdam, both separately and together.
The pair this week insisted in a widely ridiculed television interview that they went to Salisbury as tourists.
Isabelle Graber, head of communications at the Swiss intelligence service, the FIS, confirmed that the two unidentified Russians – not thought to be Petrov and Boshirov – had been arrested earlier this year in The Hague.
She said: “The Swiss authorities are aware of the Russian spies discovered in The Hague and expelled.
“The FIS participated actively in this operation together with its Dutch and British partners.
!The FIS has contributed to the prevention of illegal actions against a critical Swiss infrastructure.”
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office revealed that it had been separately investigating the pair for a year before they were arrested.
The Spiez laboratory confirmed British assertions that the Skripals had been targeted with Novichok.