A friend of mine in Barcelona has forwarded an interesting article published in today’s El País about the upcoming trial of Roberto Flórez García, an alleged double agent of the CNI (the Spanish CIA) who is accused of working for the FSB and selling hundreds of secret government documents to the Russian government.  The article reports that this trial is “unprecedented in the history of democratic Spain,” and that one of the first decisions the court will make is whether to grant the prosecutor’s request that the trial be conducted behind closed doors.

When they arrested Flórez at a house the Canary Islands in 2007, they believe that he had already delivered to the Russians five big boxes filled with DVDs, CDs, VHS and cassette tapes, computer hard drives, that he had collected over the 13 years of his career in the Spanish secret service, between March 1991 and March 2004.  Other letters seized by the police allegedly show at least one payment of $200,000 for some of these materials, and subsequent offers to sell new information as Flórez was expecting a promotion to higher security clearance levels.  Prosecutors say that the leak of these materials “pose a grave danger to national security and defense.“