LONDON: Five Bulgarian nationals suspected of spying for Russia will be charged with conspiracy to conduct espionage, UK prosecutors said on Thursday.

       Three men and two women “will be charged with conspiring to collect information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the safety and interest of the state”, the Crown Prosecu-tion Service said in a statement.

       The charges relate to alleged offences that took place between August 2020 and February 2023, the CPS added.

       Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, Katrin Ivanova, 31, Ivan Stoyanov, 31, and Vanya Gaberova, 29, will appear at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Tuesday.

       Three of them — Roussev, Dzhambazov and Ivanova — were charged in February with “possession of false identity documents with improper intention”, the CPS said.

       The trio appeared at London’s Old Bailey court in July to face those charges.

       “The charges follow an investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command,” said the CPS.

       Prosecutors warned that in order to conduct a fair trial “it is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

       Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2023