Martin, who enlisted in 2006, also told the agent that he was seeking “long-term financial reimbursement,” and that he could be very valuable over a 15- or 20-year career, the warrant says.
Martin offered to bring the agents two documents at their next meeting and accepted $500 in cash from the agent, according to the warrant.
At a meeting the next day at the same hotel, Martin produced two documents – one labeled “secret” and the other “top secret” and accepted $1,500 in cash, the warrant alleges. He agreed to meet the agent again on Nov. 19, when he produced 51 pages of secret and top secret documents, according to the warrant.
The warrant does not address how Martin came under suspicion or how he came into contact with the undercover FBI agent.
A Russian woman working in the British parliament is to be deported after security services arrested her on suspicion of espionage, The Sunday Times reported.
Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 decided that Katia Zatuliveter, 25, who works for Mike Hancock, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Commons defence select committee, was secretly working for the Russian intelligence service as a ‘sleeper’, the paper reported.
The arrest is believed to be the first time since the end of the Cold War that someone working in parliament has been accused of spying for Russia.
The newspaper said MI5 believes the attractive Zatuliveter was deliberately targeting Hancock, 64, who has a strong interest in Russia.
Hancock dismissed allegations that his assistant was a spy.
‘She is not a Russian spy. I know nothing about espionage, but she has been subjected to a deportation order. She is appealing it, because she feels, quite rightly, that she has done nothing wrong,’ he told the Press Association.
A spokesman for the Home Office, or interior ministry, said: ‘We do not routinely comment on individual cases.’
Zatuliveter, who underwent security vetting before taking up her job, was arrested by police and immigration officials last week and is being held at a secure facility awaiting deportation to Russia.
The move to deport her comes after she was stopped while re-entering Britain at London’s Gatwick airport in August. Before releasing her, security officials questioned her in depth about her work for Hancock, the report said.
A source told The Sunday Times: ‘Her presence here is not considered to be conducive to national security. There was unhappiness about what she could have access to. The intention is to show her the door.’
The report said the British MP employed Zatuliveter after meeting her in Strasbourg, where he often travels on business as a member of the parliamentary forum of the Council of Europe.
The deportation could place further strain on Britain’s diplomatic relations with Russia, which are only just emerging from an icy period after the murder by poisoning of the dissident Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
MANAMA (AFP) – A regional centre to fight Al-Qaeda must be created to help countries join ranks and eradicate the Islamist “danger” which threatens the world, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief said on Friday.
“The danger threatens all of us and the fight against terrorism necessitates international action,” Prince Turki al-Faisal said in Manama, which is hosting a major conference on Middle East security.
“We must relaunch the idea of (setting up) a regional centre to fight” against Al-Qaeda, Prince Turki said.
“There should be no obstacles between countries on the exchange of information” about Al-Qaeda, he added.
In 2005 Saudi Arabia first floated the idea of a regional centre based in the ultra-conservative kingdom, where Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was born, to pool international resources against the Islamists.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi, whose country is the ancestral homeland of Bin Laden, told Friday’s meeting the “struggle against Al-Qaeda failed in part because we don’t see this as a global issue.”
“Each one of us is concentrating on their own national security. We need a unified strategy,” Kurbi said.
For his part, British Defence Minister Liam Fox said that “transitional terrorism by definition has no borders.”
“We have to learn to act together,” Fox said.
The annual Manama Dialogue organised by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies draws prime ministers, defence ministers, military officials, intelligence chiefs and private sector heads from across the region and beyond.
LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani police have arrested five suspects linked to an attack on a spy agency building in Lahore last year which killed 24 people, the city’s police chief said.
“The suspects have confessed their role in the suicide attack on the intelligence agency building,” police chief Aslam Tareen told reporters, adding that the group had been planning more terror attacks.
“The five were arrested a couple of days ago from Shahdara,” a neighbourhood in Lahore, the country’s eastern hub, Tareen told a press conference.
“We are in a warlike situation and this war on terror has spread across Pakistan, but we are trying to do our best to maintain security,” he said. It would take time to complete the investigation, he added.
Police said the suspects belonged to the previously unknown Al-Toheed-wa-al-Jihad faction which falls under the umbrella Pakistani militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and had trained in North Waziristan.
“They were activating themselves and planning terrorist activities in Lahore,” Tareen said.
The group was also engaged in kidnapping for ransom, an investigator said.
“They kidnapped people for ransom in 2009 in Faisalabad and Sialkot,” senior police investigator Zulfiqar Hameed told the press conference.
“Their next target was some security forces buildings in Lahore,” he said.
“Police have recovered four suicide vests, one rifle, 32 hand grenade pins, 13 number plates of vehicles, eight mortar shells and ammunition.”
At least 24 people were killed, including 13 policemen, civilians and security officers, in the May 2009 suicide attack on an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) building.
A group calling itself “Tehreek-i-Taliban Punjab” claimed responsibility for the blast in a Turkish-language statement posted on jihadist websites.
Around 4,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks.
South African chemical giant Sasol became embroiled in allegations of industrial espionage and sabotage against environmental activists, when Greenpeace took an American subsidiary to the Federal Court in Washington, DC.
Other respondents in the case include The Dow Chemical Company and two public relations firms.
Greenpeace accuses Sasol North America and Dow of hiring private investigators to steal its documents, tap its phones and hack into its computers between 1998 and 2000.
It is suing for damages, which it says should be established by a jury. Central to the complaint is a community’s battle against the pollution of Lake Charles, in Louisiana, near the Sasol plant.
Greenpeace claims that local residents suffer high rates of cancer and respiratory problems linked to the company’s production processes.
It claims that the two chemical companies, though their PR agencies, hired a security firm to keep tabs on it and the campaigns it was conducting.
At issue is whether Sasol can be held liable for the alleged sins of a company in which it invested. The Louisiana plant became part of the Sasol stable only in 2001, after the alleged espionage took place.
The chemicals
According to Sasol’s website the Lake Charles plant produces commodity and speciality chemicals for soaps, detergents and personal care products.
At the time of the Greenpeace complaint, it was manufacturing ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, and vinyl chloride.
CONTINUES BELOW
Sasol North America operates as part of Sasol Olefins Surfactants, headquartered in Germany, which is, in turn, part of the chemicals division of Sasol Limited.
“At the time referred to in the Greenpeace complaint the company in question was named Condea Vista Inc and was not owned by Sasol,” said Sasol Group communications chief Jacqui O’Sullivan this week.
O’Sullivan said Sasol acquired Condea Vista in March 2001. “The alleged … espionage relates to a time period more than 10 years ago,” she said.
Condea Vista allegedly leaked up to 21 000 metric tonnes of ethylene dichloride into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana in 1994, sparking an intensive environmental campaign. The area was the subject of an environmental investigation in 2001.
Evidence that Greenpeace plans to use in the lawsuit includes files from security firm Beckett Brown International, consisting of daily logs, emails, reports and phone records.
The 56-page lawsuit alleges that Beckett agents infiltrated a Louisiana community group concerned about the plant’s activities and conducted “surveillance and intrusion” against employees at the plant, as well as community members.
Greenpeace’s claims
The security firm’s agents also allegedly obtained Greenpeace activists’ phone records and sorted through their rubbish.
Greenpeace claims off-duty police officers and former American National Security Agency computer security experts stole thousands of confidential documents from the activists, including campaign plans.
Greenpeace claims Beckett’s billing records show that it spent hundreds of hours spying on it.
“Beckett Brown International identifies Greenpeace as a ‘target’ and, in a 1998 memorandum describing its activities to monitor ‘environmental activist groups’, stated that the information being obtained by Beckett ‘provides insight into the scheduling of environmental protests and actions of the group, corporate targets, the tracking of maritime cargo by the group and internal political issues of the group’,” court papers say.
Philip Radford, executive director of Greenpeace, wrote in his blog that the first purpose of the lawsuit was “to put a dent in the arrogance of these corporate renegades who have for too long believed that ethics do not apply to their pursuit of ever-higher profits”.
“Second, we believe it is every citizen’s right to stand up for the health of their children and community without fearing retribution, an invasion of privacy, conspiracy against them or theft of their belongings.
“We believe Dow and Sasol conspired to do this to Greenpeace; we aim to stop this before it happens to you.”
Greenpeace claims that the public relations firms involved — including Nichols-Dezenhall and Ketchum — acted as middlemen between the chemical companies and Beckett.
Greenpeace apparently smelled a rat when an investigative piece in American magazine Mother Jones in 2008 hinted that Beckett was spying on activists in Louisiana.
The article lifted the lid on the company’s far-flung activities, including work for Walmart, Halliburton and Monsanto. Beckett has since been disbanded.
