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International Criminal Court in The Hague
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Peter Seyfferth / IMAGO
The Russian military intelligence service GRU has apparently tried to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC).
This was announced by the Dutch news service AIVD on Thursday.
Accordingly, the Dutch authorities managed to unmask a Russian agent disguised as a Brazilian who was supposed to start an internship at the ICC.
As such, the man would have had access to the ICC's buildings and IT system.
The AIVD described the risk of infiltration by the man as "very high".
Among other things, the ICC is already investigating alleged Russian war crimes in Georgia in 2008.
In addition, suspected Russian war crimes in the current war in Ukraine are being investigated in Ukraine, Germany and France.
As an insider at the ICC, the man might have had access to their investigation results.
The use of illegals is described as the supreme discipline of espionage
The intelligence method shows that the issue is of great importance to Russia.
The GRU selected a so-called »illegal« for the infiltration attempt.
Such agents are agents who use an elaborately constructed false identity that has been cultivated for years.
Training them and creating the legend is very expensive and time consuming.
The use of illegals is therefore described as the supreme discipline of espionage.
Counterintelligence services rarely manage to catch them.
In Germany, the authorities last caught Russian illegals in 2011 with the attack couple.
They, too, had faked a past in South America.
US authorities had previously managed to unearth a network around an agent with the code name Anna Chapman.
Learned your own CV by heart
The AIVD reported that the GRU man who was now busted in the Netherlands had covered up any traces of Russian connections.
At the same time as the announcement, the authority published a partially redacted document that was found in the original Portuguese version.
In it, the man describes his life story in detail, including the relationship problems in his alleged family.
The AIVD stated that the document was probably created in order to memorize one's own CV.
The secret service did not say how the authorities uncovered the man with the code name Viktor Muller Ferreira as a Russian secret service man by the name of Sergey Cherkasov.
It was done in cooperation with their partner organizations, according to the AIVD website.
The man was denied entry to the Netherlands in April based on intelligence findings.
He was sent back to Brazil.
