The Department of Foreign Affairs is taking a serious view of US claims that a false Irish passport was used by a Russian spy ring in the country.
A spy using the assumed name Richard Murphy, one of 10 people arrested by the FBI at the weekend for gathering information for the Russians, picked up the forged Irish passport in Rome, documents released by the US justice department allege.
Murphy, who was born in Philadelphia and lives in New Jersey, flew from Newark to Rome last February, where he was instructed to collect an Irish passport in the name of Eunan Gerard Doherty before flying on to Moscow, according to the criminal complaint filed by FBI officers.
The alleged spy was told to carry Time magazine and wait outside the Libreria shop near San Giovanni subway station in Rome. The passport was described in communications as an old "transit passport".
He had to wait for a contact to approach and say: “Excuse me, could we have met in Malta in 1999?” Murphy was told to reply: “Yes indeed, I was in La Valetta, but in 2000.”
The department said yesterday it had learned that one of the people arrested is alleged to have travelled on a forged Irish passport. A spokesman said it was seeking more information on the allegations.
The firm position of the Government in relation to the fraudulent use of Irish passports was a matter of public record, the spokesman said.
Earlier this month, the Government expelled an official at the Israeli embassy in Dublin in protest over the use of forged Irish passports by suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in Dubai.
Fine Gael foreign affairs spokesman Billy Timmins said the FBI claims highlighted once again the vulnerability of Irish passports. He called for the US and Russian ambassadors to be questioned over the allegations.
“It’s only five months since we learned that eight Irish passports were used by a Mossad unit which carried out the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel last January.”
Last year, more than 33,000 Irish passports were reported lost, stolen or mislaid, he pointed out.
The FBI claims the operatives’ job was to cultivate US policy makers and contacts in lobby groups while maintaining the veneer of American life. Their alleged techniques were decidedly old-fashioned, for example using bag drops or “brush-past” exchanges in parks, train stations and cafes to swap money orders and equipment. Contact was maintained using Morse code and radio transmitters, and computers were used only when a two-way wireless link was required.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said he was awaiting an explanation on the arrest of the 10 people.
Russia's foreign ministry said the US arrests of suspects in an alleged Russian spy ring would not have a negative impact on Russian-US relations, Interfax news agency reported.
"We expect that the incident involving the arrest in the United States of a group of people suspected of spying for Russia will not negatively affect Russian-US relations," the news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying.
Elsewhere, an 11th suspect accused by the United States of spying for Russia has gone missing after being released on bail in Cyprus, Cypriot police said today.