The five Bulgarian citizens living in Great Britain and accused of espionage for the benefit of Russia will appear today at the Magistrate’s Court in Westminster in central London, BNR reported.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced that criminal proceedings against the five individuals were active and everyone was entitled to a fair trial.
Orlin Rusev, 45, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Biser Djambazov, 41, and Catherine Ivanova, 31, both from the west London borough of Harrow, Ivan Stoyanov, 31, from Greenford, west London, and Vanya Gaberova, 29 of Churchway, North West London are expected to be charged with offenses under section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. It means “participating in a conspiracy to gather information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy state.”
Rusev, Djambazov, and Ivanova were indicted on February 11, 2023, for possessing false identification documents with improper intent. It became known about the arrest of the three in mid-August.
According to the British authorities, it is about the period August 2020 and February this year. The five are believed to be a spy cell headed by Orlin Rusev.
Espionage prosecutions in British courts are very rare, with cases of espionage by foreign nationals often being dealt with directly by expulsion.
Relations between London and Moscow have been strained for more than a decade, notably over the 2006 poisoning on British soil of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko and the 2018 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal. worsened sharply after the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine in February last year.
London has already charged three Russians, who it says are Russian GRU officers, over the attempted assassination of Skripal, which involved the use of the Novichok chemical warfare agent.
