The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been illegally spying on people far outside the US embassy in Sweden. By chance, the Swedish Homeland Security Police Säpo found out and put a stop to it.
This is reported by the leading security and defence expert of the Swedish quality newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) on Monday, based on “several reliable sources”. Two CIA agents are said to have shadowed possible terrorists for six months in the first half of 2009 behind the backs of the Swedish authorities. It was only when the Swedish security police were monitoring the same people that the agency learned that a “third party” was active. Säpo demanded an immediate end.
Both the US agents and their then-chief at the US embassy in Stockholm are no longer in Sweden. Last fall it became known that the CIA was also monitoring Swedish citizens directly from the Swedish diplomatic mission, including video cameras.
The US espionage service and the Swedish security police Säpo have clashed several times. In 2006, two Säpo employees disguised as technicians boarded an American plane at Stockholm’s Bromma city airport to gather evidence that the US was secretly carrying terrorists away. Since then, as far as is known, there have been no more so-called CIA terrorist flights via Sweden. | © 2011 Marcel Burger for ANP News Agency (originally published in Dutch on 23 May 2011)