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Newspaper cleared over Guillou ‘spy’ affair

Sweden's Press Council (Pressens opinionsnämnd) has freed the Expressen newspaper for its article series revealing that the prominent Swedish author and journalist Jan Guillou had liaisons spanning five years with the Soviet intelligence service in the 1960s.

Newspaper cleared over Guillou 'spy' affair

Jan Guillou had in his report to the council maintained that he had been identified by Expressen as a spy but the Press Council rejected this and ruled that the allegations published in the newspaper were correct.

“Guillou was able to comment on the news day after day, he was allowed to chat with visitors to the site, he could speak out on web-TV, he could write on the debate page,” Expressen chief editor Thomas Mattsson wrote in a comment on the ruling in his blog.

The revelations were disclosed by Expressen after it obtained documents from Swedish intelligence agency Säpo on Guillou’s relations with the KGB.

The documents centre around Russian agent Jevgenij Ivanovitj Gergel, the KGB’s man in Stockholm at the end of the 1960s.

A witness statement from one of Guillou’s journalist colleagues at the time raised the alarm over relations between the two. It also refers to an assignment to steal an internal telephone directory from the American Embassy in Stockholm.

Guillou confirmed that he first met Gergel at a reception held at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm in 1967.

”We never did anything other than talk politics,” he told the newspaper.

Guillou adds that his connection never led to any journalistic revelations and he denies spying for the Soviets.

He concedes, however, that he undertook paid assignments but claims the purpose was of a professional nature, to investigate how the KGB was working in Sweden at the time.

”It was just a few non-events and it is not a crime to meet foreign intelligence services,” he added.

Guillou had contact with the KGB until 1972 when he began publishing articles that revealed the existence of Informationsbyrån, a secret Swedish military intelligence agency that spied on Swedish citizens for political purposes. He was later jailed for espionage.

Säpo’s investigation of Guillou’s KGB relations never led to any indictments Expressen wrote.

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Police probe Georgian’s ‘execution’ in Berlin park

German police were Sunday investigating the assassination-style killing in a Berlin park of a Georgian man who was reportedly a former special forces commando and Chechnya war veteran.

Police probe Georgian's 'execution' in Berlin park
File photo: DPA

Police have arrested a 49-year-old suspect from Russia's Chechnya republic over Friday's murder of the man media identified only as Zelimkhan K., 41.

The killer had approached his victim from behind, as he was on his way to a mosque, shot him twice and fled by bicycle in what one witness described as an “execution” style killing.

Police divers later recovered a Glock handgun, a wig and the bicycle from the nearby Spree river, reported Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

A large sum of money was found in the home of the suspect, according to Tagesspiegel daily.

The victim was reportedly a veteran of the Second Chechen War (1999-2009) who later joined a Georgian anti-terrorist unit.

In 2012, his unit engaged in an operation against militants holding hostages in the Lopota gorge near the border with Russia's Dagestan republic.

German media said the murder was believed to be a revenge killing related to the victim's military past.

One of his sons said Zelimkhan K., a father of five, had survived four previous attempts on his life, the most recent in 2015 in Tiflis, Georgia, B.Z. daily reported.

For the past few years Zelimkhan K. had been living in Berlin under an assumed identity.

German police had, meanwhile, also listed him a potentially militant Islamist for reasons still unclear, Bild reported.

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