Russian colonel Mikhail Mikhushin went by the name Jose Assis Giammari and posed as a Brazilian academic in Norway (Picture: Christo Grozev/Bellingcat)
A Norwegian academic colleagues believed to be from Brazil has been accused of being a deep cover Russian spy.
The man, who called himself José Assis Giammaria, had allegedly been working as a researcher at the University of Tromsø prior to his arrest, where he specialised in Arctic security.
But after being arrested on suspicion of entering Norway under false pretences on Friday he was named by security services as Mikhail Mikushin.
Investigators clarified that they are ‘not positively sure of his identity, but we are quite certain that he is not Brazilian’.
Further evidence from investigative outlet Bellingcat accused Mikushin of being a senior Russian military intelligence officer who had spent years crafting a secret undercover identity.
According to Christo Grozev’s research, before he changed his name to José Assis Giammaria and got a new fake identity in Brazil, Mikhail Mikushin was registered at the address of the GRU academy in Moscow.
Based on the man’s living quarters, he was assumed to hold the rank of at least Colonel within GRU, a branch of Russian military intelligence.
After time in Brazil in 2006 to establish his new identity, Mikushin reemerged in 2015 as José Assis Giammaria, a political science graduate from Canada’s Carleton University.
He soon began publishing articles on international relations and even started volunteering for Canada’s New Democratic party during the federal election later that year, knocking on doors for candidate Sean Devine.
‘Canada, generally speaking, is a non-specific country. It’s a good place to burnish your [identity] without raising too many red flags,’ former security analyst Stephanie Carvin told The Guardian.
Ex-spook Putin has built his administration on close ties with the security services (Picture: EPA)
‘The whole point of the backstory is you don’t want to stick out at all. You want to seem extremely boring and plain. And Canada fits the bill.’
After building an academic portfolio in Ottawa and Calgary, ‘José’ later migrated to the Norwegian town of Tromsø, where he began posing as a university lecturer after being recommended for the job by a Canadian professor.
The suspect was first detained on Monday morning as he was making his way to his job at Tromso university, in northern Norway.
He was initially placed in detention for violation of immigration laws, with a view to deportation, but the investigation was swiftly expanded to cover suspicions of ‘illegal espionage against state secrets of such a nature as to harm the fundamental interests of the nation’.
A spokesperson for Norwegian police declined to reveal what specific event precipitated the decision to arrest him earlier this week, but added that it was the right point to stop the activity he was involved in.
The deputy chief of the security service, Hedvig Moe, told Reuters that the man represented a ‘threat to fundamental national interests’ and should be expelled from Norway.
She described him as an ‘illegal agent,’ who she said were typically ‘talent scouts recruiting agents for later, and preparing the ground for other spies to do traditional intelligence work,’ according to Reuters.
The suspect denies all charges against him, but an Oslo court remanded him in custody for four weeks on Friday after deeming him a flight risk.
Following the announcement of his arrest, Russia’s embassy in Oslo on Tuesday criticised what it called Norway’s ‘spy mania’.
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An agent who spent years crafting a secret undercover identity as a Brazilian academic has been ‘unmasked’.
