Daily Star : MI6 SPY MURDERED BY 'MATA HARI' HONEYTRAP ASSASSIN

MI6 SPY MURDERED BY 'MATA HARI' HONEYTRAP ASSASSIN

By Jerry Lawton, chief crime correspondent | August 27, 2010

A REAL-LIFE James Bond found murdered in his bath could have fallen prey to a modern day Mata Hari.

Police found a SIM card containing telephone numbers of escort agencies in the flat where 31-year-old spy Gareth Williams was discovered stuffed inside a giant sports bag.

Porn was also recovered from the £500,000 top floor apartment.

Mr Williams, an expert code-cracker, was within days of coming to the end of a year-long secondment to MI6 and returning to GCHQ in Cheltenham, Glos.

Intelligence experts are trying to locate his laptop and MP3 player. They fear he could have been targeted by enemy agents in a “honeytrap’’. They were last night trying to determine if state secrets could be in the wrong hands.

MI6 try to infiltrate foreign terror networks such as al-Qaida and monitor the Russian and Chinese underworld.

A senior intelligence source said: “It is a major concern that classified information Mr Williams may have been privy to could have leaked.

“Establishing if national security has been compromised is our immediate priority in light of his tragic death. Items discovered in the flat suggest there may have been a sexual element to this.”

Some reports, unconfirmed by police, suggested women’s clothes in Mr Williams’ size were discovered in the apartment in Pimlico, central London, suggesting he might have been a cross-dresser.

But detectives have not ruled out the possibility his killers may have placed items there. Last night police were trying to determine if he was strangled, suffocated or poisoned.

His dad Ian, a nuclear power plant worker, mum Ellen and sister Ceri arrived in London after breaking off a holiday in the US.

Childhood pal Dylan Parry, 34, feared his school friend was vulnerable because he was “so innocent”.

Mr Williams’s best friend Raphael L’Hoste-Morton, 32, a former GCHQ colleague who works for a youth group in Gloucester, denied they had had a sexual relationship.

Mr L’Hoste-Morton, who had been on foreign exchange trips with Mr Williams, was too upset to discuss the tragedy.