We are still waiting for the Information Commissioner to rule on our Freedom of Information Act Request complaint, regarding the refusal by the Foreign & Commonwealtth Office to name the four Russian diplomats and possible SVR Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officers , who were expelled from the Russian Embassy in London in mid July 2007, following the failure of the UK Government to extradite Andrei Lugovoi or have him prosecuted in Russia, for the alleged murder of British citizen Alexader Litvinenko through radioactive Polonium 210 poisoning, in London, in November 2006.
The FCO has not named the 4 British diplomats expelled , tit-for-tat, from Moscow either. All this Cold War style secrecy is both pointless and insults the intelligence of the public.
Every foreign Embassy in London and in Moscow, and therefore every other Government and intelligence agency in the world, will have been informed, directly or indirectly which of their fellow accredited diplomats were expelled, if only for official protocol and seating arrangement purposes at formal functions and ceremonies
What then, is the point of keeping the British public in the dark about this still unresolved murder of a British citizen, using a method which put lots of innocent British bystanders at risk ?
See the correspondence so far regarding our Freedom of Information Act request - FCO diplomatic expulsions Polonium 210 murder affair blog category archive. It is not clear to us that the names of foreign accredited diplomats should be somehow be exempt from the UK Freedom of Information Act law, when such diplomats are not technically subject to most UK laws at all.
Anybody on the internet can compare last year's London Diplomatic List (published on 17th June 2007) with this year's version, published on 18th June 2008 and come up with a list of possible candidates for the 4 names of the expelled Russian diplomats or perhaps intelligence agents. None of these people is ever going to be sent to a major diplomatic posting "under diplomatic cover" again, so naming them is not going to increase the risk to their safety in any way.
You can open the full comparison the 2007 and 2008 versions of London Diplomatic List in a new window, together with links to the original sources and to mirror copies, which does not not fit neatly into this blog post format.
Russian Federation Diplomats on the 17th June 2007 London Diplomatic List, but not on the 18th June 2008 one
* = married but not accompanied by wife or husband
m = married
Mr Sergey N. Goldin m Counsellor and Consul General- Vladimir A. Samanov m Counsellor
- Mr Valery V. Rodichkin m Counsellor
- Mr Andrey S. Ochkov m Deputy Trade Representative
- Mr Oleg G. Erokhin m Deputy Trade Representative
Mr Andrey S. Vinnik 1st Secretary- Mr Igor N. Khotkin m 1st Secretary
- Colonel Evgeny V. Bobkin m Senior Assistant Defence and Military Attaché
- Commander Edward J. Belashev m Assistant Naval Attaché
- Mr Vladislav G. Novikov m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Gennady A Saenko m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Sergey V. Saveliev m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Mikhail V. Safronov m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Evgeny N. Gusev m 3rd Secretary
- Mr Ilya M. Lysenko m 3rd Secretary
- Mr Pavel V. Andreev 3rd Secretary
- Mr Sergey A. Askretkov Attaché
- Mr Alexander M. Batyaev m Attaché
- Mr Vladimir V. Barinov m Attaché
Mr Andrey V. Gavrilov m Attaché- Mr Alexey V. Mukhachev m Attaché
4 of these 21 people must presumably be the unnamed in public, diplomats and alleged intelligence officers, who were expelled from London in July 2007.
At a guess, the Consul General (Sergey N. Goldin ) is not likely to be an SVR intelligence officer (too senior and ceremonial a position)
Similarly the Military attaché (Colonel Evgeny V. Bobkin and Commander Edward J. Belashev), may well have military intelligence functions, but would not be SVR officers, caught up in the Litvinenko murder.
The Deputy Trade Representatives (Andrey S. Ochkov and Oleg G. Erokhin) do not seem to have been replaced by people using those same tiles, so, assuming that the SVR is trying to keep its "diplomatic cover" strength intact, perhaps they can be excluded as candidates as well.
Obviously we are not as suspicious and devious as Russian intelligence agencies and politicians, so all of this speculation could easily be wrong.
The following 13 people are new arrivals on the June 2008 London Diplomatic List, compared with last year.
- Mr Andrey Batmanov m Counsellor & Consul General
- Mr Alexander P. Zinovyev m Counsellor
- Mr Oleg Y. Sepelev Counsellor
- Mr Sergey Andriashin * First Secretary
- Mr Alexey A. Solvyev m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Anton Azarov m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Sergey V. Peresada m 2nd Secretary
- Mr Alexander B. Shoshnikov 2nd Secretary
- Mr Mikhail Repin m 3rd Secretary
- Mr Gleb V. Nazarov Attaché
- Mr Nikolay A. Gusev m Attaché
- Mr Viktor A. Koryagin m Attaché
- Mr Konstantin Nikitin m Attaché
Are any of these direct replacements for the 4 expelled diplomats, and possible SVR Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officers ?
UPDATE: 6th September 2008 - we have added in the names on list published as a printed document:
London Diplomatic List 2008 - published by The Stationary Office 14th January 2008, ISBN 10 0115917934, ISBN 13 9780115917936
The people listed both on the June 2007 list and on the January 2008 list, but not on the June 2008 list are:
Mr Sergey N. Goldin m Counsellor and Consul General
Mr Andrey S. Vinnik 1st Secretary
Mr Andrey V. Gavrilov m Attaché
This probably eliminates them as likely candidates for the 4 expelled diplomats, assuming that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office did not publish a false listing in the printed document on sale to the public via The Stationary Office.
Our Freedom of Information Act on this matter has been rejected by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, who seem to have managed to persuade the Information Commisioner's Office to find in their favour as well.
Some of the comments, reproduced in the Information Commissioner's Decision Notice, apparently from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office pooh poohing our legitimate Freedom of Information Act rights, are insulting.
Since we are not rich enough to pay for barristers to argue our case before the Information Tribunal, the bureaucracy seems to have won again, and only the British public is being kept in the dark, again - all the world's governments, intelligence agencies, terrorist organisations, organised criminals etc. know who these people are.
The Daily Mail / Mail on Sunday newspaper has, during 2008, named three diplomats at the Russian Federation embassy in London as being likely SVR intelligence officers.
Back on 20th January 2008 they named
34 Russian spies - including diplomat who writes restaurants reviews
The Daily Mail on 28th June 2008 also mentions another name:
Labour MP pulled before chief whip for inviting 'Russian spy' to tea in the Commons
All three are still listed on the current London Diplomatic List:
Alexander V. Polyakov - Counsellor
Andrey A. Pritsepov - Senior Counsellor
Alexander V. Sternik - Senior Counsellor
N.B. "reporting back" to the SVR is something which all Russian diplomats are likely to do, if they come across anything which might be useful to them, exactly like any other diplomats, of any nationality, will do with their own intelligence agencies. That is not the same as them being "legal" intelligence officers, working under diplomatic cover.
and
The June 2007 London Diplomatic List only includes sixty seven names, including that of the wife of the Ambassador i.e. 10 fewer than stated by the Minister in the is Written Answer.
The London Diplomatic List does include 2 other Russians accredited as Permanent Representatives to the International Maritime Organisation headquarters in London (part of the United Nations, and therefore also with diplomatic status).
Who are / were the other eight Russian diplomats ?
N.B. there now only sixty diplomats at the Russian Embassy etc. names on the current June 2008 version of the List, still with another couple of Permanent Representatives at the IMO.
Has there been an unpublicised further round of diplomatic expulsions, between London and Moscow, following the Russian harassment of the British Council and British Petroleum in Russia since last year ?
See former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray's blog article - Andrew Mackinlay - an Honest Man in Parliament
I wanna know that is Mr.Frances donald a london diplomat or not.