‘US spy’ stabbed near GCHQ knew attacker, says councillor

AN “American spy” who was stabbed near the GCHQ base in an alleged terrorist incident had just finished a gym session and was known to her attacker, it emerged last night.

The woman, who is thought to be in her 20s, was attacked shortly after leaving a leisure centre in Cheltenham last Thursday evening and sustained serious injuries. A man, who was arrested at the scene, was last night charged with attempted murder.

Joshua Bowles, 29, is also charged with causing actual bodily harm and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London on Thursday.

Mr Bowles was initially held on suspicion of attempted murder, but was rearrested on Friday under the Terrorism Act after it emerged that the victim was an American working with the National Security Agency (NSA). Police said the decision to treat the case as terrorism was taken when “some specific details” came to light during the course of the investigation, but it is not thought the victim was targeted because of her secret intelligence role.

Witnesses at the scene claim the victim and suspect had been arguing with one another in a car immediately before she was stabbed and a local councillor said he understood they were in a relationship of some kind.

Stephan Fifield, a Conservative councillor in Cheltenham, said: “We have a lot of people who work for CGHQ who are residents of the town. My impression is that this incident was not to do with the organisation itself, but that the victim did work there. I have heard that they were in some sort of relationship.”

Mr Fifield said a house in the Gloucestershire town had been raided in connection with the attack and the man being questioned was from the town.

Officials have not revealed the exact role of the victim, but it was reported she worked for the US government and was a member of the NSA, which is responsible for global information gathering and counterintelligence. It is understood she had been seconded to GCHQ’S Cheltenham base and was working inside the doughnut-shaped headquarters alongside British counter-intelligence and cyber experts.

The NSA and GCHQ have a long history of collaboration and play a vital role in keeping people safe from the international and domestic terrorism threat and cyber attacks from hostile states.

GCHQ, which opened its new headquarters in 2002, has about 6,000 staff including mathematicians and analysts who listen in and monitor millions of forms of communication from around the world.

The leisure centre is a mile from the town centre and about three miles away from the GCHQ building. The incident occurred at about 9.15pm in the car park of the leisure complex.

The victim received serious stab wounds in the attack but managed to get out of the car and raise the alarm with members of the public.