(The Hague) The Dutch secret service announced on Thursday that it had prevented a Russian spy from gaining access as an intern at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which sits in the Netherlands and investigates war crimes in Ukraine.
Posted at 12:10 p.m.
If he had not been exposed in time, the man could have gained access to the building and the computers of the court, to collect information and identify sources for the account of the Russian military intelligence (GRU) for which he works.
In short, he could have “influenced the criminal proceedings of the ICC”, which investigates crimes committed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, but also the Russian war in Georgia in 2008, the Dutch secret service said. (AIVD).
The individual was identified as 36-year-old Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov. He pretended to be a 33-year-old Brazilian under the name of Viktor Muller Ferreira to gain access to the ICC, the Dutch secret service said.
He was arrested in April at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol from Brazil, set to begin his internship at the ICC after being admitted, Dutch news agency ANP reported.
He was returned to Brazil on the first plane, the AIVD said.
The spy posed a “potentially very high threat” because having one of their own inside the ICC could have been “of great value to Russian intelligence services”, raised the Dutch secret service.
It is rare for an intelligence agent “of this caliber” to be arrested, said Erik Akerboom, director general of the AIVD, quoted by the ANP.
“The GRU has invested years in concealing the true identity. It’s a huge effort,” Mr Akerboom added, adding that the unmasking of the spy in April has only come to light now so as not to harm the investigation.
False identity
The Russian spy had carefully built an identity for several years by inventing a life down to the smallest details, revealed by the AIVD in a document relating his tastes and his life course, written by himself in Portuguese .
He supposedly had a troubled relationship with his parents, a distaste for fish, had a crush on a teacher, and was nicknamed “Gringo” because he “looked like a German”.
The court said it was very grateful to the Dutch authorities for this “important operation and more generally for revealing security threats”, said in a press release Sonia Robla, spokesperson for the ICC, which investigates crimes of alleged wars committed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
“The ICC takes these threats very seriously,” she added.
This is not the first time that the Netherlands has exposed Russian intelligence operations on its soil, and in particular in The Hague, where several courts and international organizations are based.
In 2018, Dutch authorities expelled four suspected Russian GRU spies they accused of trying to hack into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which was investigating attacks in Syria.