Skripal understood what many Western counter-espionage professionals knew during the Cold War, that spying is not an easy crime to prosecute, particularly if those under suspicion had observed decent tradecraft and held their nerve during interrogation. As the questions came around one time after another, sessions after session, day by day, and as he noticed small variations in the interrogators’ routine a conviction grew in him. He and Yuri had been dropped in the same shit because of a mole.
They had the gun, they had some of his secret writing things they’d found in his flat, well, yes, that was awkward. But he had an explanation for that too, of course, that a GRU officer naturally had these things, a leftover of his agent work overseas. Then they had evidence that his spending and lifestyle were inconsistent with someone living on a GRU colonel’s pension. But they couldn’t tie him to anyone specific in MI6, even on that last trip to Izmir, when they’d been following and filming him. They couldn’t prove any intelligence had passed between him and them. And as for his money, he went over it again and again, he’d been doing business. So why was he sitting there? Like any trained, competent intelligence officer, the cycle of questions that whirred around his head started and finished with the possibility of a penetration.
And as the interrogations went on through 2005, his early inkling grew into certainty. These second-rate FSB guys had been given the task of preparing a court case against him. But the reason he was slammed up in Lefortovo was because someone had ratted him out, likely betrayed Yuri too, and that fact, that person, had to be protected at all costs. Somehow these FSB people would have to concoct something for the court that would prove his guilt but protect the source of their intelligence.
This mind game took months to reach its conclusion, and while he had no idea how long he would endure this tedious interrogation and walking up and down the corridors, he felt he could hold on, just as he had held on all those times in the ring. He had the love of his wife and kids, somehow everything would turn out OK.
In 2006 the day arrived for his trial to begin. It would be heard in a military court, almost all of it in camera. Sessions continued sporadically for months, culminating in the verdict in October, two years after he had been arrested. There had been some interesting evidence shown in court, surveillance footage of him leaving Sheremetyevo for Izmir for example. There were also some bank statements produced that had been recovered from his flat. They show an account opened early in 2004 (during the visit to Malaga when he had met Richard and Stephen), and in one it can be seen that he had received two payments in euro amounts equivalent to $3,000.
Some of the charges amused Skripal, for example, some allegations relating to Madrid late in 1992, several months before he had been posted there. He suspected that the prosecutors had made a crass mistake, copying and pasting elements of their indictment against Yuri Burlatov, who was serving in Madrid at that time, into his own file.
He had parried many of the accusations, shrugged off others, and when all else failed, relied on Article 51 to avoid self-incrimination. But of course this was not some battle of great forensic minds in which the most coherent case would triumph. This was a process designed to reach a particular conclusion, and he could never have doubted a guilty verdict, which came on 9 August 2006. He was sentenced to thirteen years in a labour camp.
The case produced headlines and a good deal of interest from the Russian media. The Chief Military Prosecutor, Sergei Fridinsky, interviewed on Russian TV that evening, said this about Skripal’s spying:
The damage cannot be measured in roubles or in terms of anything else. The fact is that the interests of the Russian Federation have been damaged by the dissemination of classified information. And as a result of this any consequences could have ensued regarding the activity that was the subject of this trade, because, of course, money was paid for this information.
Russian reporting contained a blend of truth – for example that he had been recruited in Spain or that Spanish bank statements had been found in his flat – exaggeration, and complete fiction. It was alleged in one Russian report that Skripal had been paid $50,000 a meeting, in another that he had got $100,000 in total for his spying, and elsewhere that he had been paid $3,000 per month.
In fact the payments, it seems, were per meeting, and from the moment that FORTHWITH provided his GRU organizational chart in that Madrid hotel there were something in the order of fifteen or sixteen meetings (including Liudmila’s two ‘book deliveries’ to Richard). Sometimes there were bonuses for specific titbits. His reward was, then, probably in the $70–90,000 bracket, though of course MI6’s commitment to house and look after him if he ever defected involved far larger sums.
The FSB cover story about why they had become interested in him emerged in its fullest form in a 2014 documentary, A Mole in the Aquarium, in which an FSB colonel, Andrei Sharov, was interviewed in silhouette. Sharov pointed to Skripal’s post-retirement socializing with GRU friends, saying, ‘I think he became of interest to counter-intelligence, because as a pensioner he became very interested in the affairs of his former colleagues, which naturally aroused suspicion.’ As for the proof of Skripal’s guilt Colonel Sharov added:
Counter-intelligence officers became interested in the source of his income. In Spain it turned out he had an account into which three thousand dollars was flowing every month, and nobody knew where from. It was concrete proof that the man was linked to espionage.
By the time of his trial, Russian media was already taking its cues from FSB and other officials about blackening traitors’ names. Many of these themes, such as the moral corruption, greed, or egocentricity of those who spied for the West were familiar from Soviet times. Russian reporting on the Skripal case tried to undermine him in other ways too with claims that were perhaps designed to damage MI6’s faith in their own asset.
It was suggested for example that Skripal had cooperated fully with his interrogators, making a full written confession, and tried to plea-bargain a reduction in his sentence. A Russian website claimed that he had pleaded guilty to charges of treason and espionage. Since the actual proceedings of the court were in closed session, there is no definitive record. However, in his conversations with me, he was adamant that he had turned down a plea bargain and, as we will see, his refusal to admit to his guilt became a complicating factor in discussions years later about his possible release.
In Skripal’s account of his interrogation the investigators had tried and failed to prove that he had communicated secrets during his trips abroad. Faced with the task of putting him on trial without proof, a confession or guilty plea would have turned the whole matter around for the FSB. He says they therefore offered him a sentence of five to six years if he confessed to that, a term that might reduce to two to three years with parole.
Western intelligence officers have offered me differing views about the extent to which Skripal did or did not confess. Those who support his version point out that in cases where those accused of espionage in Lefortovo had really broken and told all, there was often no trial. Or the convicted spy would be quietly released shortly after sentencing. There were many matters, also, relating to his career as an SIS asset that did not emerge at the time of his trial or in the various Russian media hit pieces about him. These details, such as his method of communicating via secret writing in books, do not appear to have been discovered by his interrogators.