Guardian : 'British spy' found dead identified as Foreign Office worker

'British spy' found dead identified as Foreign Office worker

Body of Gareth Williams, 31, was found stuffed in sports bag in the bath of his central London flat

Sam Jones and Helen Pidd | August 25, 2010

An MI6 worker whose body was found stuffed into a sports bag in the bath of his London flat was identified locally today as Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old Foreign Office employee.

It was reported tonight that a postmortem carried out on the intelligence officer was inconclusive, but showed he was not stabbed to death.

Reports suggested he had worked at GCHQ, the government's secret listening service in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and had been on secondment to MI6, the secret intelligence service. It is thought he could have been dead for up to two weeks.

This morning, the man's former landlady, Jenny Elliott, said he had lived in a flat in her house near Cheltenham for 10 years while working nearby.

On Monday night, she said, a woman identifying herself as the Foreign Office's head of employee assistance visited her to ask if she had heard from him lately or knew where he was.

Police found his body on Monday afternoon when they were called to his flat in Pimlico after reports he had not been seen for some time. Inside the property officers found the man's mobile phone and a collection of sim cards laid out, the Daily Mail reported.

The location of the five-storey townhouse, a mile from MI6 headquarters, fuelled speculation that the man was working there before his death.

Elliott, 71, said the man had been due to move back into her house next week after spending a year living and working in London.

"He was due to come back to me on 3 September," she said. "He rang me and said he would be back then. He said, 'Can I come back?' and I said sure. I hadn't heard anything else until a lady from the Foreign Office called at six o'clock to say that they hadn't had a sighting or a whereabouts and had we heard anything."

Elliott said he was a quiet man who enjoyed cycling and running and kept himself to himself.

"This awful thing is happening and he was a lovely man, very well-mannered and very likeable," she said.

"He was very clever and had been to Cambridge and had a very important job at the Foreign Office. Although he didn't belong to me, I was quite proud of him. It's like losing one of my own children."

"The suggestion there is terrorism or national security links to this case is pretty low down the list of probabilities," a source said.

A GCHQ spokesman said: "There is an ongoing police investigation and it would not be appropriate for us to comment at all as this is ongoing.

"We have nothing to add. Our policy is not to comment on individual members of staff or whether they are staff."

Scotland Yard has launched a murder inquiry, in conjunction with counterterrorist and security service officials.

The street was cordoned off last night as forensic teams searched the property and surrounding areas for clues as to how and why the man was killed.

A black private ambulance parked outside the house before 9.30pm. A few minutes later forensics officers, accompanied by police officers, removed the corpse in a red body bag.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said: "Detectives are investigating a suspicious death following the discovery of the body of a man in a central London flat. At around 1640 hours on Monday 23 August officers attended the flat, on the top floor of a property in Alderney Street, Westminster, following reports that the occupant had not been seen for some time.

"Officers gained entry and found the body of the man, believed to be aged in his 30s. He was pronounced dead at the scene."

Scotland Yard refused to comment on the dead man's identity until next of kin had been informed.

No arrests have been made.

The street of Georgian terraced homes remained cordoned off this morning and police officers stood outside No 36, which is divided into three flats.

Curtains were drawn in the top-floor flat, where it was believed the murder took place.

Many politicians and bankers live on the street, neighbours said.

One local resident said police had told her that the man could have been murdered a fortnight ago.

If reports of the deceased man being a spy are true, the murder will be the highest-profile killing in the UK of someone linked to the secret services since that of Alexander Litvinenko.

The former KGB agent died in hospital after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 in 2006.

Landlord's name is a Russian joke

Gareth Williams was found dead in a flat rented from a company called New Rodina. Details of the company ownership are hidden because it is registered in the British Virgin Islands and not listed with Companies House.

Land registry documents show property was bought for £675,250 in 2000 with a mortgage from the Royal Bank of Scotland and remortgaged twice, in September 2005 and February 2006.

The documents show the owner operated through a law firm called Park Nelson which occupied a rented office in Bell Yard, off Fleet Street, but no longer appears to exist.

New Rodina, which means "new home" or "new homeland" in Russian, is a familiar one for Russian speakers, and may have been part of an in-joke among GCHQ employees relocated to London. Typically, Russians who live abroad refer to their adopted country as a "new rodina". "There is an element of joke in it. Russians like this kind of wordplay," one Russian said.

The name raises the possibility that either Williams, or his superiors, may have been working on clandestine material relating to the Kremlin or Russia's ubiquitous intelligence services.

Relations between Britain and Russia have been slowly improving, but have not recovered from the diplomatic fallout following the polonium murder of the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in November 2006. That led then foreign secretary David Miliband to expel three Russian diplomats in 2007. The government still refuses to cooperate with Russia's post-KGB spy agency, the Federal Security Services.

Another possibility is that Williams's Pimlico flat is Russian-owned. Affluent Russians make frequent use of offshore companies. London is popular with rich Russians, many of whom have homes in the capital or educate their children at top private schools.

"New Rodina is the kind of name you could give to a company offering flats and services to newly-arrived Russians seeking a foothold in London," one Russian said.