Convicted of a single count of espionage, they were each sentenced to expulsion following 10 days' imprisonment
Standing one by one in a New York courtroom, 10 spies confessed yesterday to working in the US as undercover agents for Russia and were sentenced to immediate deportation, setting up one of the biggest, least secret swaps of intelligence officers since the end of the Cold War.
Under an agreement hastily thrashed out between government officials in Washington and Moscow, the five men and five women captured in US cities and suburbs last week by the FBI are to be exchanged for four people imprisoned in Russia for suspected contact with western intelligence agencies.
In Manhattan's federal courthouse, the Russian agents were obliged to strip away their false US identities, rising in turn to spell out their true names.
They gave almost identical statements that they had been "acting as agents of a foreign government, namely the Russian Federation, without providing prior notification to the US attorney-general". Convicted of a single count of espionage, they were each sentenced to expulsion following 10 days' imprisonment – time they have already served on remand.
The US government confirmed that the spies would be exchanged under a tit-for-tat deal. Attorney general Eric Holder described the case as "extraordinary" and said: "The agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the United States and its interests".
There was a hint of Moscow's behind-the-scenes desperation to move its agents back to Russia, as a lawyer for one of the defendants, Peruvian-born Vicky Pelaez, said that Russian officials had made offers including free housing for life, an indefinite living allowance of $2,000 a month, visas and free passage for her children, and the right to travel beyond Russia to any country she wished, in return for her co-operation.
Pelaez, a 56-year-old journalist for a Spanish-language newspaper in the US, had been unwilling to go to Russia, and told the court, through an interpreter, that her work for the Russian government had been under the instruction of her husband, fellow defendant Juan Lazaro – who revealed his true name to be Mikhail Vasemkov.
"Under my husband's instructions, I travelled to Peru and met with a man. I knowingly brought a package of money into the US," said Pelaez. "I carried letters written in invisible ink to this person".
Other defendants, speaking in clear, straightforward voices, revealed their true identities – Richard and Cynthia Murphy, a purportedly wholesome couple from New Jersey, told judge Kimba Wood their real names were Vladimir and Lydia Guryev.
Another spy, Donald Heathfield, who assumed the identity of a deceased Canadian child, revealed he was Andrey Bezrukov, while his wife Tracey Foley, an estate agent from Boston, gave her genuine name as Elena Vavilova.
Anna Chapman, a former Barclays Bank employee who spent several years working in London, told the judge that her name was genuine but, admitting she knew her activities were illegal, she said that under instructions from the Russian government, she had "agreed to communicate via laptop with another person". Several of the defendants said their work for Russia dated back to the 1990s.
Machinations had begun earlier in the day in Russia in preparation for the "tit-for-tat" release of four prisoners which directly involves Britain. Igor Sutyagin, a Russian scientist convicted in 2004 of passing military secrets to a British company, was reportedly plucked from a former KGB jail in Moscow and flown to Vienna, as a first step towards his expulsion to London.
Sutyagin's father, Vyacheslav, said he had received no official confirmation of his son leaving Moscow or arriving in Vienna: "There have been some unconfirmed reports that Igor flew in to Austria earlier this afternoon, but so far it seems to be wishful thinking.
"We are waiting for Igor to call us himself. We had expected it to be today, but it looks like it could be tomorrow".
Moscow was preparing to release several other Russians convicted of working for the CIA or MI6. Sutyagin, who is married with two daughters, told his mother he had learned of one other name on the list to be exchanged: Sergei Skripal, a military intelligence officer jailed in Russia in 2006 for giving information to MI6.
A Russian intelligence source told the Kommersant newspaper of two other proposed individuals: Alexander Zaporozhsky, an SVR operative sentenced to 18 years for espionage in 2003; and Alexander Sypachev, jailed for eight years in 2002 for working for the CIA. But Sypachev's lawyer said that he would not agree to such a deal.
Today, riot police secured the perimeter of Lefortovo, the former KGB jail in Moscow where Sutyagin was being held, as a convoy of armoured vehicles arrived. A few hours later the Russian media reported that he was seen leaving a plane in Vienna, but his family said it was "speculation".
While theUS-Russian swap may avoid any potential embarrassment to either government that a trial might pose, the exposure of Russia's spies on US soil leaves behind considerable disagreement over how seriously to take their espionage ring. While the FBI has portrayed the deep-cover "sleeper" agents as a threat to American security, their at times bumbling attempts to infiltrate high policy-making circles has made them figures of fun to many Americans.
Chapman, a red-headed 28-year-old whose British former husband has sold compromising photos to tabloids, has become such a celebrity that a New York newspaper lamented her departure and asked if the city could keep her.
Yet there is evidence that the Russian intelligence service, the SVR, put considerable effort in to the operation, obtaining false identities and sending hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds.
All 10 of the Russians told the judge they knew, throughout, that their activities were illegal, and that they had not been coerced into a plea agreement. The FBI's director, Robert Mueller, said that blocking counter-intelligence was a "top investigative priority" and described the 10 convictions as a tribute to officers working "tirelessly behind the scenes to counter the efforts of those who would steal our nation's secrets".
