A spy for the British intelligence agency MI5 used his status to terrorize his partner before moving abroad and continuing his intelligence work, while under investigation, a BBC investigation revealed.
A video shows the man threatening to kill the woman and attacking her with a machete.
The foreign national cannot be named, despite evidence that he is a threat to women, after the British government took the BBC to court to block publication.
Evidence shows that he is a right-wing extremist with a violent past.
In a legal battle unprecedented, the BBC argued that women had a right to know their identity and that it would protect potential victims from harm.
And successfully resisted the UK government’s attempt to stop publication extensive research.
Beth, a British national, met Agent X on a dating site. The couple moved to the UK
At first, she explains, he was “charming”. They seemed to have a lot in common
But over time, he revealed himself as a misogynist and extremist, obsessed with violence and cruelty. Beth (not her real name) says he sexually assaulted her and was also abusive and coercive.
Claims the agent used his position in the British security services to terrorize her.
“He was in total control. I was a shadow of who I am now”, says Beth.
As the relationship became more abusive, the woman’s mental health deteriorated.
“At the end of the relationship, he dictated to me what to do every hour of the day: where I went, who I saw, how She worked, what she did at work, what she wore”.
He made her “feel absolutely useless” and used “the fact that I had mental health problems to intimidate me and make me feel more vulnerable”.
He gathered weapons and made her watch terrorist videos of executions and murders, he assures.
“ There was so much psychological terror towards me that finally culminated in a nervous breakdown, because I was so afraid of everything, because of how it had made me think, the people I was involved with and the people he worked for.”
Beth says that X told her he was working as a paid informant for the British security services, a human intelligence agent or source undercover (known formally as CHIS), infiltrating extremist networks.
She was aware that he was having meetings with his superiors, receiving money and equipment.
At first, she explained, he hid his real name from her. Our investigation has established that X spent several years working as a CHIS for MI5, using various aliases.
The security service runs agents in networks terrorists, informants secretly working with their handlers, MI5 officers. Controversially, they authorize their agents to commit crimes as part of their job, but only to access vital intelligence, stop more serious crimes, or ensure an agent’s safety.
But this does not apply to her private life.
Beth says he told her she couldn’t report his behavior because of her status .
“It meant that I couldn’t talk about his behavior towards me, about the violence I went through, sexual or physical, because he had men in powerful places who always supported him, who would intervene and kill me if he spoke”.
X was paid to report on networks of right-wing extremists, but the evidence that the BBC had shows that his own vision of things was genuine .
Beth says she admired several white supremacist killers and declared her intent to commit acts similar.
At home, his violence was directed faces Beth. In a video, her agent is seen attacking her with a machete.
The incident was filmed by Beth on her cell phone. In the moment before the attack, she is heard expressing her fear of being killed and saying that his treatment of her was unacceptable.
But he told her that the would kill, he left the room and returned holding a machete, which he then raised above his head.
When she is heard saying that the recording could be turned over to the police, X launched a fit with the gun and the fists. The video cuts off in the middle of her screaming.
Beth managed to confront him, but he tried to attack her again hours later with a knife, in an attempt to cut her throat. she. The woman assures that she bit his hand to stop him.
The police visited her house after the attack, but our investigation has uncovered serious problems with the response of the authorities.
The man was arrested, charged with assaulting Beth and appeared in court. However, while she was in court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case.
Beth says that X returned to the house and continued to abuse her.
Police did not take a full statement from Beth or obtain video of her attack. The CPS quickly suspended the prosecution.
The police force involved and the CPS insist that the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.
After returning home, Beth says that X claimed that the security services would support him and that she was “nothing”.
Another video, shot undercover by Beth, captured an argument in which the man suggested she could be killed for asking too many questions.
On the recording Beth asks if he will be the one to kill her. Her response notes that for him she had almost done exactly that during a previous violent episode.
Relaxing on a sofa, she continues: “She is constantly on me. This murderous thing is always in me… I always imagine how I beat someone to death… It’s always been me… I’ve been since I was like six years old… I’m too aggressive, I know it myself”.
The couple would not stay together for much longer: X kicked Beth out of his property and disappeared while another investigation was carried out against her.
During a search of the house after the machete attack, local police officers had discovered extremist material, including the man’s personal Nazi paraphernalia.
The BBC reviewed a police record showing the evidence found by the agents, such as a private diary in which he had written about killing “Jews”. He had also written about killing Beth.
Local cops called counter-terrorism detectives, who in turn seized several articles. A terrorism investigation was launched against the agent, but he left the UK while the investigation was ongoing.
Within a few weeks of his departure, Beth had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized.
While she was hospitalized, a man who did not identify himself returned to a member of her family items of hers that had also been seized by anti-terrorist agents. The relative assumed the man was someone related to X. Neither Beth nor her family knew of the terrorism investigation.
The visit disturbed the family, concerned about how the stranger knew Beth’s address and possessions.
The visitor was an MI5 officer. The material seized by a police investigation, under a police order, had been delivered to that agency.
The highly unusual movement is consistent with interference in a criminal proceeding by of the security service. The agent’s own items were also handed over by the police to MI5.
Counter-terrorism police say no crime was identified during their investigations, but have apologized for the fact that Beth’s possessions were not given to her directly.
After her discharge from the hospital, Beth complained to the local police and inquired about why the case was dropped, why they took her things and why a stranger returned them.
It took the police a year to interview her, but since then she has stated that there is nothing left to do, that everything had been reversed previously stigmatized. This was not the case.
During the course of a process against the police, Beth was informed that the force had no information about the seizure of his possessions, but that he could see in “notes” that some things had been taken and returned to X.
The police said that they did not seize objects as part of their own investigation, and “ they could not report when or why they were taken”.
This was not true, since the police force in question was responsible for having called the anti-terrorist agents.
The police claim that the possessions had been returned to the agent was also not true: the material had been handed over to MI5.
The BBC has determined that, after the agent disappeared, he moved abroad and began working for a foreign intelligence agency.
Also that it has a history of terrible abuses in that country, with its extremist and violent behavior long before he became an MI5 agent.
We tracked down and spoke to a former partner of the man in the same country Foreign. His account of his behavior is every bit as alarming as Beth’s. The two women never met or communicated.
Ruth, not her real name, says the man seemed normal at first, but eventually he started abusing and terrorizing her.
He also threatened his life and that of his daughter.
“He said he would be able to kill me and my daughter too, and then put our bodies somewhere and no one would ever know who he was.”
Fearing for her safety, she sought help from a medical organization and was taken to a refuge. The trauma had left her unable even to speak at the time, and she was admitted to hospital.
“I was psychologically broken, really broken,” she says.
“I was wondering why he changed so much, but once he told me that this is his real face and that he had been acting all the time before”.
The BBC located a professional who had helped care for Ruth. He corroborated her account and described the events as perhaps the most disturbing he had ever known.
He remembered a notebook in which the man had recorded his desire to kill. Ruth separately described the same document, saying it contained fantasies involving “blood, bones, flesh, human flesh, eating children’s flesh.”
And he threatened to kill and sexually abuse the girls Ruth knew. He would later make the same threats to Beth.
The police in that country found out about it and the threat she posed.
In a disturbing echo of the way in which he later abused his MI5 connection, the agent had used the arm of a criminal organization to which he was linked to terrorize Ruth, telling her that its members might kill her.
Finally disappeared, leaving her alone with her financial debts.
We discovered that she subsequently spent several years in the UK using her name, as a way to hide his true identity, while he was in the pay of MI5.
“I think it’s not fair and I’m furious,” says Ruth. “I am very hurt. I feel deceived. can’t have confidence. There is no justice”.
The BBC investigation found independent evidence from both women that corroborates their descriptions of the man.
There are writings in which he boasts of sexually exploiting women, using language that is too offensive to expose.
In other papers, he expressed satisfaction with the rape and murder of a young woman.
He openly joined a dating site in his search for British women, under an alias he used for his work at MI5. Beth says that he had said that the search for women online was for the purpose of exploiting them.
Since the BBC was able to establish that the man had a history of violence and abuse, the M15 should similarly have been aware.
Last year, a police officer on duty in London took advantage of his position to coerce, rape and murder a woman, Sarah Everard.
There was overwhelming public concern, also expressed by UK government ministers, about how such a tragedy could have occurred , as well as on the State’s general response to violence against women and girls.
An investigation into her death was announced, and the Ministry of the Interior hoped that it would “shed light on the failures that they allowed a police officer on duty to abuse his power in such a horrible way and make recommendations for change within the police”.
The warning signs displayed by the MI5 agent are clear. The two women we interviewed believe he is capable of murder.
But, when the BBC presented its findings to the government, the The counterparty took the BBC to the High Court, trying to prevent the story from going public.
The court legally prevented the man from being named, due to an apparent risk to him posed by other extremists.
The government said it “will not comment on security or intelligence,” but the court order “is intended to protect national security and prevent a real and immediate risk to life, safety, and privacy ”.
However, the BBC wanted to identify the man so that women he is already in contact with, or those who meet him in the future, may be warned.
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