The Skripal Files by Mark Urban

Author:Mark Urban
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

13

THE FATEFUL LETTER

On a chilly January morning, the Guardia Civil prison bus dropped its passengers outside the Audiencia Provincial. Just two men descended, walking up towards the shiny modern office block that serves as one of Madrid’s main courts. One of them was a compact, tough-looking character, shaven-headed, suited, and handcuffed, the other one his uniformed guard. The defendant was arriving for a case so secret that he had been held incommunicado for years while on remand, and the court documents used a codename, Teofilo.

In the court room itself were the defendant’s lawyer, a couple of prosecutors, the three magistrates who would sit in judgement (it was not a jury trial), and some other guards. Cameras were briefly allowed to take a shot of ‘Teofilo’ sitting next to his attorney – they captured rows of empty seats where the press, public, and relatives would normally sit but would not be allowed in this exceptional case. Lawyers love to break new ground, to explore areas of untried jurisprudence, and that morning in 2010 they would get their chance. It would be the first, and so far only, trial for treason since the restoration of Spanish democracy in 1978. As soon as the media people were shooed out, proceedings could start. ‘It was like the players were on the pitch for a Premier League match,’ one participant would observe, ‘but with nobody in the stands.’

Over the five days of this hearing, the charges were laid out: that the defendant had accumulated a hugely damaging trove of documents during his work for the Spanish national intelligence service; that these materials had been found during a search of his flat following his arrest in 2007; and that he had communicated state secrets to a foreign power. Teofilo, alias Roberto Florez, had served Spain’s secret state between1991 and 2004. Both his own former service and MI6 believed he was the man responsible for giving away Sergei Skripal and Yuri Burlatov. In terms of the three betrayals that would be needed to resolve the questions Sergei asked himself, that of Florez appears to be the first. But as so often in counter-espionage cases, the question was whether they could prove it to the satisfaction of a court.

Florez, a native of the northern region of Asturias who was forty-four at the time of his trial, joined the Spanish intelligence (then called CESID but subsequently known by the acronym CNI) from the Guardia Civil or paramilitary police. He served undercover bravely and effectively for years in the north of the country, countering Basque extremists. People who know him told me how smart Florez is, and how good with people too.

Late in 1999 he was posted to Lima, in Peru, where he was given the task of political information-gathering, while working undercover at the Spanish embassy. His cover was blown by a newspaper, and the allegation that Spanish spooks were trying to influence Peruvian elections resulted in his speedy recall to Madrid two years into his posting.

Back in Spain,

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