With contemporary governments increasingly concerned with security, and travellers ever more determined to obtain Instagram-worthy records of their trips, there have been regular cases over the past few years of innocent tourists being arrested for spying in different countries while taking photographs which turned out to include sensitive installations. Such cases are usually resolved amicably once explanations are given, and the offenders will usually get away with being expelled from the country where they were caught.
A new case in Crete, however, is unusual in that irrefutable evidence of the intention to spy has been found while the perpetrator, on being arrested, claimed he had been taking pictures for touristic purposes, and called for the intervention of a lawyer. Subsequently emerged facts about the circumstances in which he was caught, and his prior behaviour, leave little doubt about the real nature of his activities.
Arrested in Kalyves
As reported on the Haniotika Nea website on Monday, a 26-year-old Azeri was arrested by the Police on Sunday 22nd June and charged with spying. Over 5,000 photographs of the base at Souda were found in his possession, apparently taken during the four days of his stay at a hotel in Kalyves before his arrest. According to information released by the authorities, the 26-year-old, identified only by his initials N.J., had arrived in Crete on 18th June, with a Polish residency permit, and booked a room in the hotel, asking for one with a view of Souda bay.
The 26-year-old was discovered by the Police as a result of intensified security measures being applied nationally because of the developments in the Middle East, and the event followed the arrest of another Azeri in Cyprus for similar activities, who had also been under observation. According to the same sources, during his 4-day stay in the hotel the Azeri only left this room twice to buy personal necessities. When arrested, the suspect put up no resistance whatever and immediately asked for a lawyer.
Items found in the room and confiscated by the police included a laptop, a mobile phone and a USB stick, which were found to contain more than 5,000 photographs and numerous videos, chiefly of warships coming and going in Souda Bay. Commercially purchased encryption software was found on the laptop, and it appeared that the photographs had been sent to an unknown recipient.
Taken to the local Police station, the 26-year-old, speaking in Russian and Turkish, said that he had come to Greece for purposes of tourism and declined any further comment, only asking for a lawyer. Charged with espionage, he was to be taken before the Prosecutor in Chania on Wednesday. The suspect’s digital equipment has been sent to a forensic laboratory to establish what it contains and chiefly where the photographs he took have been sent.
More details of the case
In a further report, two days later, on the Haniotika Nea website, it was stated that the suspect had actually arrived in Greece on 6th January. Quoting the paper Kathimerini, it said that the 26-year-old Azeri had flown into Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens from Warsaw on a SKY Express flight. His passport, issued by the Azerbaijan authorities in September 2021 was recorded on the databases of the airlines active in the country. He also has a residency permit for Poland.
According to Kathimerini, only 24 hours after arriving he had gone to a photographic shop in the centre of Athens and purchased a Nikon camera, a camera tripod and two USB sticks. The sales receipts, which double as a guarantee, were found in his possession at the time of his arrest. It would appear that the Greek intelligence services were unaware of his presence for a period of 6 months before he turned up at Souda.
On 18th June he rented a room for a period of one month in a hotel in the Kalyves area, from which he had a panoramic view of Souda Bay. It appears that his suspicious behaviour alerted the Intelligence Services who were already focussing their attention on Crete because of the military operations in the Middle East and the enhanced role being played in these by the US base at Souda. At the same time it is probable that they were also tipped off by the Cypriot authorities following a similar case there. Only 24 hours earlier a 44-year-old man, also of Azeri origin, had been arrested and charged with espionage in Limassol, following a tip-off to the Cypriot authorities from the British Secret Service and Israel’s Mossad.
During the four days he was under surveillance, the 26-year-old N.J. only left his hotel room twice, to visit first a periptero and then a supermarket to buy necessities. On the other hand, he was seen several times going out on to a common balcony in the hotel to watch movements in Souda Bay. When he spotted a warship entering or exiting the naval base, he would return to his room and take photographs from behind lowered blinds and half-closed windows. Transferring the images to the laptop with a USB stick he then encrypted to files and sent them to a so far unknown recipient. When arrested, he had in his pocket a USB stick with 23 videos and 9 photographs of the frigate Koundouriotis which had entered the Souda naval base on 21st June to take on supplies.
It appears that the 44-year-old Azeri who was arrested 24 hours earlier in Cyprus had followed the same modus operandi. He was using the same encryption software, and had bought the same brand of camera and tripod to record the movements of military aircraft at the British base at Limassol. The 44–year-old was described in a report on bbc.com as a British subject, having British travel documents. However, local media say he is of Azerbaijani descent and has connections to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Also quoted by the BBC, Cyprus’s ANT1 news outlet said the suspect was thought to have had RAF Akrotiri under surveillance, as well as Cyprus’s own Andreas Papandreou Air Base in the western region of Paphos, since mid-April. The Greek authorities are now investigating to see if the man arrested at Kalyves can also be linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
The 26–year-old Azeri was remanded in custody on Wednesday afternoon following his appearance before the Prosecutor in Chania, and sent to the Chania agricultural prison at Agia. According to ERT NEWS, he has not cooperated with authorities and continues to refuse to be fingerprinted. During his nearly three-hour-long statement, he claimed he had travelled to Chania as a tourist, saying that while photographing landscapes, he may have accidentally captured images containing military material. “I was photographing nature and the birds, I liked Balos,” he is reported to have said. The authorities are trying to trace any contacts which the man may have had while in Greece, in particular a Polish woman who was known to have spent a considerable amount of time with him during his stay, but had left for Poland before he was arrested.
(Haniotika Nea, 23/06, 25/06)