Espionage

She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.

The head of the counterintelligence department within Belgium’s General Information and Security Service (ADIV) has been temporarily removed from office for the duration of an internal investigation, according to Belgian newspaper De Morgen, which cites several sources.

Vandenborre, who has been with the Belgian counterintelligence service for 40 years, has denied the accusations.

The legislative reform has been under preparation since the start of the electoral term in 2015. The Parliament approved the constitutional amendments needed to fast-track the reform at the end of last year and the bills for supervising intelligence operations in February 2019.

Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, a former DIA operative based in Beijing, was arrested in June while preparing to board a flight to China carrying classified information.

Investigators said Hansen, a fluent Mandarin Chinese and Russian speaker, had fallen into deep financial trouble from 2013 to 2016 and was paid more than $800,000 by Chinese intelligence for US secrets.

During that time they found that he had regular meetings with Chinese intelligence agents that he never reported, used cellphones provided him by Chinese sources and retained classified information to which he was not supposed to have access.

They discovered his work with the Chinese when in 2016 he tried to recruit a fellow intelligence case officer to work with him and the colleague reported it to their superiors.

In a deal with prosecutors Hansen pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government.

The deal set his sentence at 15 years.

US intelligence has been struggling hard against a Chinese espionage offensive that saw the CIA's Chinese informant network rolled up by Beijing several years ago, and saw several US officials exposed as Chinese spies.

In January 2018, former CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested on charges that he sold information to China. He is reportedly suspected of having provided information that allowed China to bring down the CIA's network between 2010 and 2012.

Former State Department official Kevin Mallory was arrested in 2017 for spying for China.

And another US diplomat, Candace Marie Claiborne, was also arrested for taking money from Chinese intelligence officials, though she was not directly accused of supplying information in exchange.

The leader of 10 intruders who raided North Korea's embassy in Madrid last month contacted the FBI days later, a Spanish high court judge says.

Adrian Hong Chang, a Mexican citizen who lives in the US, contacted the US agency after fleeing to the US via Lisbon, Judge José de la Mata said.

The assailants interrogated an embassy official and tried to persuade him - unsuccessfully - to defect, he added.

The group shackled, beat up and interrogated several staff inside.

According to the judge's edict, lifting the shroud of secrecy over the incident, Mr Hong Chang "contacted the FBI in New York five days after the assault, to give them his version of what happened there". He is also said to have handed over audiovisual material.

It remains unclear why the embassy attack took place or why Mr Hong Chang contacted the FBI and not authorities in Spain. The other members of the group also fled.

The break-in on 22 February occurred just days before a key summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam.

In the edict quoted by Spanish media, investigative magistrate De la Mata named two other members of the break-in group: US citizen Sam Ryu and a South Korean, Woo Ran Lee.

The judge said that while holding embassy staff hostage for several hours the group stole a mobile phone, computers, hard disks and USB pen drives.

Spanish TV channel La Sexta has released a video purporting to show the "dissident" group smashing portraits of North Korea's communist leaders inside the embassy. The source of that video has not been clearly identified.

One woman managed to flee, escaping through a second floor window and screaming for help. Concerned neighbours quickly called the police.

But when officers arrived they were greeted by Adrian Hong Chang, posing as a North Korean diplomat - he was wearing a jacket with a Kim Jong-un lapel badge. He told the police that all was well and nothing had happened.

That evening most of the group fled the embassy using three North Korean diplomatic vehicles, the judge said. Adrian Hong Chang and some others left later via the back entrance using another vehicle.

The break-in began at 16:34 (15:34 GMT) and most of the intruders fled at 21:40. They split up into four groups and headed to Portugal.

Mr Hong Chang had got access by asking to see the embassy's commercial attache, whom he claimed to have met previously to discuss business matters, the judge said. His accomplices burst in once he had got access.

In his edict, the judge said the intruders had interrogated the commercial attache and tried to persuade him to defect. They left him tied up in the basement when he refused.

The judge said the group had "identified themselves as members of a human rights movement seeking to liberate North Korea".

Authorities have dismissed the idea that common criminals are behind the alleged attack. Sources close to the investigation reportedly told El País that the operation was planned perfectly, as if by a "military cell".

And the attackers seemed to know what they were looking for. Both Spain's El País and El Confidencial dailies report that the Spanish authorities suspect US intelligence agencies and their allies could have been involved in the attack.

Victims of the alleged assault have reportedly told investigators the attackers spoke in Korean.

El País even reports that two of the group have links to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA declined to comment to the BBC.

Asked if there was any US government involvement in the raid, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told a regular news conference on Tuesday: "The United States government had nothing to do with this." Why would anyone attack the embassy?

Reports say the attackers could have been looking for information on North Korea's former ambassador to Madrid, Kim Hyok-chol, expelled from Spain in September 2017 over North Korea's nuclear-testing programme. Image copyright EPA/Yonhap Image caption Kim Hyok-chol helped organise the Hanoi summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un

But Mr Kim is now serving as a key envoy in North Korean talks with the US, and helped organise the summit in Vietnam. He also travelled to Washington DC with Kim Jong-un's right-hand man, Kim Yong-chol, in January.