Three suspected spies for Russia in the UK have been arrested and charged in a major national security investigation, the BBC can reveal.
The defendants, all Bulgarian nationals, were held in February and have been remanded in custody since.
They are charged with possessing identity documents with “improper intention”, and are alleged to have had these knowing they were fake. It is alleged they were working for the Russian security services.
The documents include passports, identity cards and other documents for the UK, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, and the Czech Republic.
They were held by counter-terrorism detectives from the Metropolitan Police, which has national policing responsibility for espionage, and are due to return in September to answer police bail.
Three of them were charged later in February with an offence under the Identity Documents Act.
In 2006, former Russian-intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London after being poisoned by assassins working for the Russian state.
Credit: bbc.com
