A RUSSIAN double agent was jailed for 13 years yesterday for selling secrets about Russian agents in Europe to MI6.

In the second British spy scandal this year, a military court in Moscow ruled that Sergei Skripal, 55, a retired colonel in military intelligence, was guilty of high treason and stripped him of his rank.

The Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB’s successor, said that Skripal was recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s while on a long posting overseas for the Russian armed forces.

He had provided the British spy agency with the names of several dozen Russian agents working in European countries until he was arrested in 2004, the FSB said. “Through his actions, the spy inflicted significant damage on the defence and security of the State,” a spokesman for the FSB said.

The Russian agents whose covers were blown were all placed under surveillance and eventually expelled by the European countries where they were posted, according to Izvestia, the daily newspaper.

The FSB said that MI6 had paid Skripal, who retired from the military in 1999, more than $100,000 (£52,000), which was deposited in a Spanish bank account. It did not specify which agency he worked for, but it is most likely to have been the Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Department, known by its abbreviation GRU.

Sergei Fridinsky, Russia’s chief military prosecutor, said that he was satisfied with the outcome of the trial, which was not open to the public. “The conviction of Skripal is lawful and justified,” he was quoted as saying.

The British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the case, details of which had not been made public until yesterday. “It is long-standing British government policy that we don’t comment on intelligence matters,” a spokesman said.

Yesterday’s verdict came seven months after Russian authorities accused four British Embassy employees of spying by using a transmitting device hidden in a fake rock.

The FSB also accused one of them, Mark Doe, of illegally funding Russian non-governmental organisations in what critics of the Kremlin saw as an attempt to smear Western-funded pro-democracy groups. Russia never expelled the four alleged spies, apparently to avoid reciprocal expulsions of its embassy staff from Britain.

President Putin said at the time that if he expelled the four accused, Britain might send more competent agents. But diplomatic sources say that two of the four, including Mr Doe, have now left Russia, although the Embassy insists that they were moved on as part of regular staff rotation. The FSB also said in January that a Russian citizen who had contacts with British agents had been detained and had confessed to espionage. It was not clear if it was referring to Skripal.

Skripal was the latest in a string of alleged spies to have been prosecuted since Mr Putin, a former KGB officer and one-time head of the FSB, became President in 2000.

In 2004 Igor Sutyagin, an arms control researcher, was convicted of treason for selling information on nuclear submarines and missile systems to a British company that investigators said was a CIA cover.

Valentin Danilov, a physicist, was also convicted that year of selling classified information on space technology to China. On Tuesday Oskar Kaibyshev, a Russian scientist, was given a suspended prison sentence of six years after being convicted of spying for South Korea.

The Kremlin says that it is trying to clamp down on the activities of foreign intelligence services who infiltrated Russia during the cash-strapped and chaotic 1990s. But critics accuse the Kremlin of rigging the trials to intimidate potential spies and strengthen its control over academia.

• Washington Petty Officer Ariel Weinmann, 21, has been charged with espionage for allegedly trying to pass classified information to foreign agents on behalf of Russia, the US Navy said. (Reuters)

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