Friday, December 22, 2006


British Soldier Spying For Iran In Afghanistan
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By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 22, 2006

LONDON, Dec. 21 -- A 44-year-old man named Daniel James has been arrested and charged with violating Britain's Official Secrets Act by passing information "useful to the enemy," according to British officials.

The officials declined to specify which enemy or to reveal details about James.

British news media reported that James is a corporal in the British army who is suspected of providing Iran with confidential information about British military activities in Afghanistan.

Judge Timothy Workman closed James's arraignment Wednesday to the public after his name and charge were read out, saying later that keeping it open would have revealed information "prejudicial to national security."

James reportedly served as an interpreter for Lt. Gen. David Richards, the British officer who leads NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to the London newspapers the Times and the Telegraph. That could have put James in a position to have heard sensitive information about U.S., British and other NATO troop movements and strategy in Afghanistan.

The Telegraph reported that James is of Iranian descent.

Tensions between Iran and the West have grown recently over Iran's controversial nuclear program. British and U.S. officials have also accused Iran of stoking instability in the Middle East with its support of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and militant Shiite groups in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said only a handful of people have been charged in recent decades with violations of Britain's broad-ranging Official Secrets Act of 1911. The most significant recent prosecution was of Michael Bettany, an official with the MI5 domestic intelligence agency who was convicted of passing information to the Soviet Union in 1984.

In 2003, the government charged a translator at the Government Communications Headquarters with violating the act by disclosing confidential information. Katharine Gun, 29, was accused of passing to a British newspaper documents from the U.S. National Security Agency asking for British help eavesdropping on U.N. Security Council delegations in the run-up to the Iraq war.

After a public outcry in support of Gun, who said she disclosed the documents as a matter of conscience, the government dropped the charges without comment in 2004.

Former civil servant David Keogh and former parliamentary researcher Leo O'Connor are awaiting trial on charges that they violated the act in 2004. Keogh is accused of giving O'Connor a leaked memo that allegedly contained details of a private conversation between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush. British newspapers reported that the document disclosed that Bush discussed bombing the headquarters of the al-Jazeera television network -- allegations that U.S. officials called "absurd."

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