The persons must have worked for Russia
Swedish law enforcement has arrested two people suspected of espionage, the country’s internal security agency, SAPO, announced on Tuesday. The suspects were arrested in the Stockholm area during a pre-dawn raid, the authority said in a statement, which provided few other details in the case.
It stated that the operation, which included the house search, had been carried out together with the police and the Armed Forces. According to local media reports, citing eyewitnesses, at least two Black Hawk helicopters have been deployed to the area to rappel police officers.
One of the arrested persons is charged with “gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and against a foreign power”, while the other is suspected of “aiding and abetting” such activities. Authorities did not disclose the nationalities of the suspects or specify which “foreign power” they allegedly spied on.
However, local media suggested that Moscow may have been involved in the affair, reporting that the suspects were actually a couple in their 60s, who had moved to the country from Russia in the late 1990s.
The authorities emphasized that the arrests had been carried out following an investigation that had “been ongoing for some time” and was not connected to any other cases currently open in Sweden.
Earlier this month, two Iranian-born brothers were charged in Sweden with “gross espionage”, having spied for Russia and its military intelligence service, commonly known in the West by its old initials, the GRU.
The brothers, one of whom reportedly worked for SAPO itself, allegedly spied for Moscow for a decade before they were arrested in September and November last year. Both have reportedly denied any wrongdoing.
(RT.com)