Spy death mystery

[Cao Pi]

Spy death mystery : intrigue and suspicion surrounds death of MI6 worker
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A British spy who was found dead in the bath of a flat in London was stabbed several times before his body was stuffed into a sports bag where it lay decomposing for up to two weeks. The property on Alderney Street, London where the body was found.

The man, named locally as Gareth Williams, is understood to have been employed as a communications worker at GCHQ but is believed to have been on secondment at the headquarters of MI6 in Vauxhall, just across the Thames from where his body was found. Forensic officers at the scene.

The discovery comes almost four years after Russian former KGB colonel Alexander Litvinenko, pictured,
was poisoned with the radioactive polonium 210 in a London hotel.


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[Cao Pi]

From his deathbed, Mr Litvinenko accused the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of being responsible for his death. The former agent, who fled to the UK in 2000 and became an open critic of the Kremlin, took three weeks to die after the poisoning in November 2006.

In 2007, billionaire arms dealer Ashraf Marwan fell to his death from a fifth-floor balcony in London's West End.

Marwan was accused of being both an Israeli spy and an Egyptian double agent. His widow believes he was killed by the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. Pictured, Carlton House Terrace, behind Pall Mall, where Marwan lived and later fell to his death.


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[Cao Pi]

In September 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was murdered after a tiny pellet containing the toxin ricin was fired into his leg from the tip of an umbrella as he was walking across Waterloo Bridge. Mr Markov, a communist defector who was working for the BBC World Service, was waiting at a bus stop when he felt a sharp jab in his thigh and saw a man picking up an umbrella. He developed a high temperature and died three days later.

A post-mortem examination, conducted with the help of scientists from the Government's germ warfare centre at Porton Down, established he had been killed by a tiny pellet containing a 0.2 milligram dose of ricin. Pictured, the 1.52mm diameter platinum sphere that contained the ricin is examined at the Police Forensic Science Services Laboratory, Lambeth, London.

Despite the collaboration of British and Bulgarian authorities and Interpol, Mr Markov's assassin has never been caught.
Police in the Strand in 1978 questioning taxi drivers about the incident.

Earlier this year Anna Chapman, pictured, was one of several people arrested by the FBI in the US in connection with being Russian agents.


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[Cao Pi]

MI6 spy Gareth Williams murder: police hunt for Mediterranean couple


MI6 spy Gareth Williams murder: police hunt for Mediterranean couple

Detectives investigating the murder of Gareth Williams, the British MI6 spy, are seeking a young Mediterranean couple seen at his block of flats in London.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
Published: 2:34PM BST 06 Sep 2010
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CCTV image of Gareth Williams on Saturday August 14 entering Holland Park underground station. Photo: MET POLICE

CCTV image of MI6 worker Gareth Williams on Saturday August 14 at Holland Park underground station

Gareth Williams was a keen amateur cyclist Photo: SWNS

Scotland Yard are trying to trace the unidentified man and woman, aged between 20-30, who visited the Pimlico house late at night, one or two months before Mr Williams died. It is believed they may have been visiting the spy at his top flat home but have not been seen since. In the first detailed public appeal about the death of the MI6 worker, Metropolitan police detectives also disclosed the 31-year-old's last known movements, captured on CCTV, as he shopped in Harrods and central London a week before his body was found.

<!-- BEFORE ACI --> Mystery remains, however, over how exactly Mr Wiliams died. Police said he was found naked, zipped and padlocked into a bag in his bath. A post mortem has established no obvious cause of death and toxicology tests have found no evidence of drugs in his body, police revealed. Police are working on the assumption that Mr Williams was either smothered or poisoned and "testing for any other substance continues".

Detectives also revealed in a statement that there was no sign of forced entry to the property in Pimlico where he was found, no signs of disturbance inside the flat, and that nothing was taken. The only people believed to be unaccounted for in recent months who were seen at the flats on Alderney Street are the Mediterranean man and woman. Police have been told they were let into the communal front door, late one evening, either in June or July. Detectives want to trace them to eliminate them from the inquiry.

The Cambridge-educated mathematician had returned home from a holiday in America on August 11. Over the next few days he was captured on CCTV shopping in the West End and Knightsbridge, and catching a Tube in Holland Park, west London. He is seen in a red T-shirt, beige trousers and white trainers, carrying a shopping bag. The last CCTV sighting of him is on Sunday, August 15, when he went into Harrods and walked towards Sloane Street, near the Dolce and Gabbana store.

Police found his body in the bath, after being alerted by MI6 staff when he failed to turn up to work, on the afternoon of Monday, August 23. Det Chf Insp Jacqueline Sebire, Homicide and Serious Crime Command leading the investigation said: "I would appeal to anyone who may have seen, or had contact with Gareth in the period between 11th and 23rd August to come forward and speak with us at the Incident Room on 0208 358 0200, or to remain anonymous Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111." "This remains a complex unexplained death enquiry."